Category: today’s top story

“The artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet can now see less than he could after a masked assailant flung acid in his face in January. Sergei Filin has lost 95 per cent of his vision and treatment at a clinic in Germany has failed to halt the deterioration.”

While he had a long and successful career as a character on screen and stage, he “swaggered his way to fame as the murderous, clinically depressed mob boss on HBO’s groundbreaking drama The Sopranos.”

“The report comes amid concern about low humanities enrollments and worries that the Obama administration’s emphasis on science education risks diminishing a huge source of the nation’s intellectual strength.”

“DreamWorks Animation, trying to lessen its dependence on the volatile movie business by aggressively expanding into TV programming, has decided to forgo cable television in favor of Netflix. In a multiyear deal announced early Monday, DreamWorks Animation will supply a flood of new episodic TV programs to the Internet streaming service.”

“A Greek court has ordered that state broadcaster ERT, which was shut down by the government last week, can resume transmissions. However, the court also upheld a plan by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras to replace ERT with a smaller broadcaster.”

“Police officers, there to protect the nearby monument bearing the statue of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the secular Turkish Republic, joined the audience, resting on their riot shields.”

“Independent auditors of the Nashville Symphony say ‘there is substantial doubt’ about the symphony’s ability to continue as a going concern, according to a new audit posted on Givingmatters.com.”

“More than four-fifths of English subsidised arts companies could lose their funding completely, the Arts Council has warned, after it modelled the effect of potential government cuts to the culture budget.”

“The Greek government has shut down the public broadcaster ERT, calling it a ‘haven of waste’. … While all 2,500 employees would be sacked, [said a government spokesman,] they would be paid compensation and would be able to apply for work when the corporation relaunches as a smaller, independent public broadcaster.”

Former ambassador Nicholas Platt: “One of the things that strikes me is that most of the literature and the music and the philosophy and so forth are very practically oriented, directed toward the solution of problems, the description of events, or program music with pictures of moonlight on water. You know the routine. And it’s beautiful. But it’s not very abstract. And I think classical music has some appeal to the Chinese because of its abstractness. It may fill a hole in their needs. There are simpler explanations. They love grand things – big buildings and big bridges – and Western classical music is grand.”