Latest news with #Ozon
Libya Review
13-05-2025
- Business
- Libya Review
Ozon Company to Operate National Telecom Network in Libya
Libya's Ministry of Communications and Informatics, under the government appointed by the House of Representatives, has officially granted a unified telecommunications licence to OZON Aljaded For Telecom and Technology Group. The move marks a significant step in Libya's efforts to modernise its digital infrastructure. In a statement issued on Tuesday, the ministry confirmed that the decision followed a comprehensive review of bids submitted under strict regulatory and technical standards. It added that the licence aims to enhance the quality of telecommunications services, strengthen digital infrastructure, and support national development across all sectors. The ministry stated that the licence offer was announced on 5 December 2024, attracting interest from 25 companies. However, only two companies—Ozon and Giga Communications and Technology—purchased the bid documents. Ozon was selected following an evaluation by a special committee composed of experts and academics appointed by the ministry. The committee assessed the proposals based on legal, technical, and economic criteria, as outlined in Law No. 22 of 2010 governing Libya's telecommunications sector. The ministry said Ozon has now been authorised to begin implementing its projects, with the licence officially effective from 4 March 2025. This development is part of broader reforms aimed at introducing competition, encouraging private investment, and expanding access to high-quality communications services across the country. The ministry affirmed its commitment to supporting initiatives that improve digital connectivity and provide citizens with reliable telecom services. Tags: InfrastructurelibyaOzonTelecom
The Independent
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
François Ozon: ‘I was a very perverse child – I loved the idea of my aunt trying to kill us all'
When he was still in his teens, sometime in the late Eighties, the filmmaker François Ozon asked his little brother to kill their family for him. Before anyone panics, this was play-acting, and for a movie. Photo de Famille was a scrappy, seven-minute blueprint for the kinds of films that would, a decade later, transform Ozon into the mischievous French prince of lust, provocation and psychosexual chaos. His brother agreed to it. As did his family. In the film, 'my brother gave some poison to my mother and smothered my father', Ozon remembers. 'And he cut the throat of my sister with a pair of scissors.' Did they mind participating in such a thing? Ozon grins. 'My mother said, 'yes, we will do that in your film because we know you wouldn't do that in reality'.' Even with that origin story in mind, Ozon's creative penchant for sex and death tends to be overstated. Yes, the 57-year-old's most internationally successful movies – the candy-coloured whodunnit 8 Women (2002), or the Charlotte Rampling murder mystery Swimming Pool (2003) – are awash in the stuff, but his output bends more diverse. There's the bittersweet coming-of-age tale (2020's Summer of 85), the Hitchcockian psycho-thriller (2017's Double Lover), the other one involving Rampling and a body of water (the tender, mesmeric Under the Sand from 2000). He's made more or less a film a year since 1997, and likes to sew a degree of tonal unease into most of them. Just when you're getting comfortable in a particular genre, out comes another one. Take When Autumn Falls, his 24th feature, which is in cinemas this week. It begins as a bucolic slice-of-life drama, with Hélène Vincent – playing Michelle, a retiree and devoted grandmother – tending to her garden and meeting with friends in a village in Burgundy. Then her stressed daughter Valérie (Swimming Pool 's Ludivine Sagnier) arrives, then a poisonous mushroom lands her grandson in hospital, then her very dysfunctional past comes to light. There are apparitions and police interrogations. Cryptic ex-cons fresh from jail. By the time a character mysteriously plummets to their death at the midpoint of When Autumn Falls, all you can do is let the film's pure, unadulterated Ozoniness wash over you. The film was loosely inspired by an incident in Ozon's own childhood, in which his aunt accidentally poisoned several members of the family with wild mushrooms. 'I loved the idea of my aunt trying to kill us all,' he laughs. 'I was a very perverse child, as you can see. Or just a future director.' Sitting in the corner of the cavernous library of London's French Institute, Ozon is dressed in a crimson jacket and black trousers, a scarf wrapped tightly around his neck. His sunglasses are on, and mostly stay on. Looking at Ozon is akin to looking at an illustration of a Frenchman drawn from memory, and he speaks in a boyish, lightly dishy register. He tells me he loved working with the 81-year-old Vincent on the film because she really looks like an 81-year-old. 'Some French actresses have so much plastic surgery that they don't have age anymore,' he says. 'I won't give you names, but you know who I'm thinking of, don't you?' He giggles. 'And I've worked with them!' In all seriousness, though, he says he understands social and industry pressure to maintain a youthful appearance, but also loves lines and loose skin – he'd sometimes shoot Vincent in extreme close-up just to show it off. 'That's not possible for some actresses. Sometimes you prefer not to go too close with the camera because it's not real anymore. You don't see the expression.' Whether their faces move or not, female actors of a certain age have lined up to work with Ozon for more than 20 years, ever since he revitalised Rampling's career with Under the Sand. He was in his early thirties at that point, but had enough resolve to insist upon her casting despite worry from the film's backers. 'She was considered, at that time, totally forgotten,' he says. 'Her career was stopped. All the French financiers said to me, 'don't work with her – she's finished'. Helpfully, I didn't follow them, and the film was successful.' That led to 8 Women, in which he pulled together a murderer's row of divas – including Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Fanny Ardant and Emmanuelle Béart – to play the suspects in a country house crime. 'When the cast was announced, everybody wanted to come to the set to see the catfights,' he laughs. 'All the media was convinced it would be a disaster, and impossible with so many egos on the same film. But they were wrong.' He thinks it would have been different if it were called 8 Men. 'Actresses are clever. They are cinephiles. They are not afraid to work with young directors. Men?' He shrugs. 'The egos of male actors can be huge. For women, there is a kind of sisterhood and solidarity.' 8 Women arrived at a time in Ozon's career that saw him shift away from the barbed, button-pushing sensibility that had defined his early work – 1998's Sitcom, which shot him to fame, was an overheated satire of the modern family, boasting orgies, sadomasochism and full-frontal nudity. It saw him dubbed the enfant terrible of Nineties French filmmaking, with more shades of his American contemporary Todd Solondz than an Éric Rohmer or a Michel Audiard. 'I was looking for me,' he says. 'It was instinctive. Maybe I was more provocative in the form?' He shrugs again, admitting that he struggles to look back at his older films. 'They are like children I've abandoned,' he laughs, 'and I don't analyse them.' He points at me. 'That is your job.' He's evolved, at least. Much like Spain's Pedro Almodóvar – who, god forbid, panned away from a sex scene in one of his recent films – Ozon's modern eroticism tends to be a little more tasteful than it used to be. It's not by design, he insists. It's cultural. 'You can see so many sex scenes on your telephone today, so sex naturally felt more transgressive 20 years ago. Sometimes I think directors would actually welcome back the Hays Code [the puritanical guidelines for American filmmakers in force between the years of 1934 and 1968] just so you can rebel against something.' The filming of sex scenes is also changing, as he's learnt while planning his next movie, an adaptation of Albert Camus' The Outsider. 'I need to work with a coordinator of intimacy,' he says. 'It didn't exist before.' He says he's not had an issue with shooting them himself. 'I always share information with my actors – what position I want them in, which part of the body I want to show, and I ask for their point of view. It's never been a problem. But it's better now – there are some directors, especially in French cinema, who push the limits when it comes to making sex scenes.' That's partly because filmmakers in France, he says, hold enormous cultural and social sway. People don't tend to say no. 'The director is king. We have the power.' And it's also one of the reasons he's never been tempted by America, despite fielding offers to direct Hollywood films in the aftermath of Swimming Pool. 'All they proposed to me were remakes, or erotic thrillers that would mean I was repeating myself.' And, he says while finally slipping off his sunglasses, 'I wouldn't have final cut.' It's a power thing, he adds. 'As a filmmaker, you have none in America. There, the director worships the producer. It is the director who helps the producer to win an Oscar.' He hoots, dismissively. This is a man who convinced his family to die on camera in the living room for him – fat chance anyone's going to be able to boss him around.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
In a Russian border region scarred by war, civilians want peace with Ukraine — but not compromise
RYLSK, Russia — Air-raid sirens are greeted with a shrug in the small town of Rylsk in Russia's southwestern Kursk oblast, where residents carry on with their day unconcerned as loud speakers warn, 'Attention, missile danger, proceed to shelter.' Nearby, soldiers stand around smoking cigarettes or jump from vehicles to pick up packages from the Ozon store, a Russian equivalent of Amazon, in the thousand-year-old town. Today, Rylsk sits just behind the front lines of the war Russia launched with the invasion of Ukraine, abandoned by the students who used to come and study at its four colleges. Its population is now mostly Russian troops, elderly people and those who have left nearby villages that have been occupied or become too dangerous in the eight months since Ukrainian forces crossed their northwestern border in a surprise incursion that Russia has failed to fully push back. In the now militarized town that is dotted with traditional blue and white churches, the signs of missile and drone damage are clear on some of the buildings. Standing in the rubble of a destroyed elementary school, Mayor Sergei Kurnosov, 39, told NBC News that a concert hall and a teachers college had also been struck in December. NBC News could not independently verify this claim.'We hope that peace will come, and we will return to normal peaceful coexistence, normal, peaceful life,' he said, emphasizing that civilians had been killed in the town as a result of the fighting. Here, almost every family has relatives in Ukraine and there are still street signs pointing the way to the town of Glukhov across the border. 'We hope that the leaders will come to an agreement and we will have peace,' added Kurnosov, who carries a drone detector with him at all times. Asked about the children killed across the border since Russia invaded Ukraine and the targeting of schools there, he called the question 'provocative.' Draconian legislation means that people can be jailed up to 15 years for criticizing the Russian army and the conflict, but others have been influenced by three years of powerful state media messaging priming them for war. Even some who want peace said they did not want to compromise. There is deep resistance to the idea that President Vladimir Putin is responsible for the war, which rumbled into its third year last month. While people were keen to return to a normal life, Kurnosov said, this could only be achieved if Ukrainian forces left the region. 'We must liberate our territory,' he said. 'This is clear.' Elsewhere, Leonid Meshkov, a 39-year-old construction worker, said the war 'began with' Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. To end the war 'everything rests on Zelensky, and not on Putin,' he said. While his administration has reached out to the Kremlin in recent weeks and cut off military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine, President Donald Trump said Friday that he was 'strongly considering' sanctions and tariffs on Russia in hopes of forcing a settlement to end the war. In a post on Truth Social he said they could remain in place 'until a Cease Fire and FINAL SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT ON PEACE IS REACHED.' While Ukrainian forces remain in Kursk, 'it's a very serious barrier for any talks,' Andrei Fedorov, Russia's former deputy foreign minister, told NBC News in an interview Tuesday. Without elaborating, he added that 'there is a kind of order to take Kursk back by the end of March, so maybe the problem will disappear.' While this would mean more fighting and go against Trump's ambition to end the conflict quickly — on the campaign trail he vowed to end the war within 24 hours of taking office — Fedorov said he believed the Kremlin was hoping to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin. But he said it is demanding to know more about the White House's ultimate goals before the Russian leader could commit. 'Meeting with Trump without results is not suitable for Putin,' Federov said, adding that the Russian leader needed results and 'a visible victory.' Talks between the two leaders were broached at high-level talks attended by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other officials in Saudi Arabia's capital, Riyadh, last month. But while the United States and Russia agreed to re-establish 'the functionality of our respective missions in Washington and Moscow,' there has been little movement since then. And according to Fedorov, who remains a Putin ally, the American delegation arrived without concrete proposals. Meeting Trump was like going 'to the desert,' he added. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in an interview Tuesday that her country was 'not in a hurry but we are ready' for talks. 'It depends on both sides and the speed of both sides,' she added. Meanwhile, Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Thursday that he would travel to Saudi Arabia on Monday to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and that his team would stay on to hold talks with U.S. officials. Zelenskyy has been on the back foot following the disastrous Oval Office meeting last week with Trump and Vice President JD Vance. The White House subsequently cut off Ukraine's American intelligence feed that has helped it to anticipate Russian attacks and troop movements, and avoid nightly barrages from Russian drones on its cities and infrastructure. For Russia, an ultimate goal will be securing sanctions relief from the Trump administration. But Trump won't be able to do that unilaterally, said Maximilian Hess, author of 'Economic War: Ukraine and the Global Conflict Between Russia and the West.' But while the White House has made no secret that it is interested in economic opportunities with Russia, he said the 'most important' sanctions 'are shielded by legislation.' 'That means those Russian individuals and entities blacklisted under certain executive orders cannot be lifted without congressional review,' Hess added. With Republicans currently in control of both the House and the Senate 'a simple majority vote is all that would be needed to lift these sanctions,' he said, adding the only obstacle would be whether the party's lawmakers were prepared to 'buck Trump on this issue.' In Russia, people had been incentivized to fight, according to Fedorov, the former deputy foreign minister, who pointed to the fact that people receive around 2 million rubles, or around $20,000 when they sign up for the army, and then around 200,000 rubles around $2,250 a month. The average Russian salary is around $830 a month. So, people in the army understand 'they will lose all this money' if the war stops, he said, adding that the other problem would be 'what to do with the military-industrial complex, which is now working 24/7.' The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based defense think tank, estimates that around 80,000 troops, including some from North Korea, are ranged against Ukraine in Kursk. Ahead of Putin's invasion in February 2022, the region was a critical rally point for the massive buildup of forces along the border; columns of tanks from a major military base in the area were among the first to pour into Ukraine's neighboring Kharkiv region. Today, camouflaged encampments, troop carriers and military checkpoints are ever present. Anti-tank defenses line the highway and plastered across a building in Rylsk is a quote from Putin. 'Being strong is a guarantee of national security for Russia,' it reads. Standing outside a store selling military uniforms, Margarita Akhapkina, 35, said 'everyone' wants the war to be over. The mother of four, who said her husband has been serving in Putin's forces for three years, added that war had become 'normal.' Many, including Stanislav Boikin, a 16-year-old high school student, are hopeful that Trump can help to secure a peace deal. Speaking in English, the teenager said the American president was 'a wonderful person.' Keir Simmons and Natasha Lebedeva reported from Rylsk, and Matthew Bodner from London. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
In a Russian border region scarred by war, civilians want peace with Ukraine — but not compromise
RYLSK, Russia — Air-raid sirens are greeted with a shrug in the small town of Rylsk in Russia's southwestern Kursk oblast, where residents carry on with their day unconcerned as loud speakers warn, 'Attention, missile danger, proceed to shelter.' Nearby, soldiers stand around smoking cigarettes or jump from vehicles to pick up packages from the Ozon store, a Russian equivalent of Amazon, in the thousand-year-old town. Today, Rylsk sits just behind the front lines of the war Russia launched with the invasion of Ukraine, abandoned by the students who used to come and study at its four colleges. Its population is now mostly Russian troops, elderly people and those who have left nearby villages that have been occupied or become too dangerous in the eight months since Ukrainian forces crossed their northwestern border in a surprise incursion that Russia has failed to fully push back. In the now militarized town that is dotted with traditional blue and white churches, the signs of missile and drone damage are clear on some of the buildings. Standing in the rubble of a destroyed elementary school, Mayor Sergei Kurnosov, 39, told NBC News that a concert hall and a teachers college had also been struck in December. NBC News could not independently verify this claim.'We hope that peace will come, and we will return to normal peaceful coexistence, normal, peaceful life,' he said, emphasizing that civilians had been killed in the town as a result of the fighting. Here, almost every family has relatives in Ukraine and there are still street signs pointing the way to the town of Glukhov across the border. 'We hope that the leaders will come to an agreement and we will have peace,' added Kurnosov, who carries a drone detector with him at all times. Asked about the children killed across the border since Russia invaded Ukraine and the targeting of schools there, he called the question 'provocative.' Draconian legislation means that people can be jailed up to 15 years for criticizing the Russian army and the conflict, but others have been influenced by three years of powerful state media messaging priming them for war. Even some who want peace said they did not want to compromise. There is deep resistance to the idea that President Vladimir Putin is responsible for the war, which rumbled into its third year last month. While people were keen to return to a normal life, Kurnosov said, this could only be achieved if Ukrainian forces left the region. 'We must liberate our territory,' he said. 'This is clear.' Elsewhere, Leonid Meshkov, a 39-year-old construction worker, said the war 'began with' Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. To end the war 'everything rests on Zelensky, and not on Putin,' he said. While his administration has reached out to the Kremlin in recent weeks and cut off military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine, President Donald Trump said Friday that he was 'strongly considering' sanctions and tariffs on Russia in hopes of forcing a settlement to end the war. In a post on Truth Social he said they could remain in place 'until a Cease Fire and FINAL SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT ON PEACE IS REACHED.' While Ukrainian forces remain in Kursk, 'it's a very serious barrier for any talks,' Andrei Fedorov, Russia's former deputy foreign minister, told NBC News in an interview Tuesday. Without elaborating, he added that 'there is a kind of order to take Kursk back by the end of March, so maybe the problem will disappear.' While this would mean more fighting and go against Trump's ambition to end the conflict quickly — on the campaign trail he vowed to end the war within 24 hours of taking office — Fedorov said he believed the Kremlin was hoping to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin. But he said it is demanding to know more about the White House's ultimate goals before the Russian leader could commit. 'Meeting with Trump without results is not suitable for Putin,' Federov said, adding that the Russian leader needed results and 'a visible victory.' Talks between the two leaders were broached at high-level talks attended by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other officials in Saudi Arabia's capital, Riyadh, last month. But while the United States and Russia agreed to re-establish 'the functionality of our respective missions in Washington and Moscow,' there has been little movement since then. And according to Fedorov, who remains a Putin ally, the American delegation arrived without concrete proposals. Meeting Trump was like going 'to the desert,' he added. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in an interview Tuesday that her country was 'not in a hurry but we are ready' for talks. 'It depends on both sides and the speed of both sides,' she added. Meanwhile, Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Thursday that he would travel to Saudi Arabia on Monday to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and that his team would stay on to hold talks with U.S. officials. Zelenskyy has been on the back foot following the disastrous Oval Office meeting last week with Trump and Vice President JD Vance. The White House subsequently cut off Ukraine's American intelligence feed that has helped it to anticipate Russian attacks and troop movements, and avoid nightly barrages from Russian drones on its cities and infrastructure. For Russia, an ultimate goal will be securing sanctions relief from the Trump administration. But Trump won't be able to do that unilaterally, said Maximilian Hess, author of 'Economic War: Ukraine and the Global Conflict Between Russia and the West.' But while the White House has made no secret that it is interested in economic opportunities with Russia, he said the 'most important' sanctions 'are shielded by legislation.' 'That means those Russian individuals and entities blacklisted under certain executive orders cannot be lifted without congressional review,' Hess added. With Republicans currently in control of both the House and the Senate 'a simple majority vote is all that would be needed to lift these sanctions,' he said, adding the only obstacle would be whether the party's lawmakers were prepared to 'buck Trump on this issue.' In Russia, people had been incentivized to fight, according to Fedorov, the former deputy foreign minister, who pointed to the fact that people receive around 2 million rubles, or around $20,000 when they sign up for the army, and then around 200,000 rubles around $2,250 a month. The average Russian salary is around $830 a month. So, people in the army understand 'they will lose all this money' if the war stops, he said, adding that the other problem would be 'what to do with the military-industrial complex, which is now working 24/7.' The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based defense think tank, estimates that around 80,000 troops, including some from North Korea, are ranged against Ukraine in Kursk. Ahead of Putin's invasion in February 2022, the region was a critical rally point for the massive buildup of forces along the border; columns of tanks from a major military base in the area were among the first to pour into Ukraine's neighboring Kharkiv region. Today, camouflaged encampments, troop carriers and military checkpoints are ever present. Anti-tank defenses line the highway and plastered across a building in Rylsk is a quote from Putin. 'Being strong is a guarantee of national security for Russia,' it reads. Standing outside a store selling military uniforms, Margarita Akhapkina, 35, said 'everyone' wants the war to be over. The mother of four, who said her husband has been serving in Putin's forces for three years, added that war had become 'normal.' Many, including Stanislav Boikin, a 16-year-old high school student, are hopeful that Trump can help to secure a peace deal. Speaking in English, the teenager said the American president was 'a wonderful person.' Keir Simmons and Natasha Lebedeva reported from Rylsk, and Matthew Bodner from London. This article was originally published on
The Guardian
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Post your questions for François Ozon
Is François Ozon the most talented French film-maker currently working? That's a big ask, in a very crowded field, but Ozon has got the back catalogue to back it up. From his 1998 feature debut Sitcom (notwithstanding 1997's 52-minute See the Sea), early films such as Fassbinder adaptation Water Drops on Burning Rocks and star-stuffed crime musical 8 Women, on to more recent works including Frantz and Summer of 85, Ozon has ranged widely across styles and genres, offering something new and original wherever he's gone. He's even done an English-language period drama, Angel, starring Romola Garai. A distinctive feature of Ozon's career is his ability to command great performances from top-notch female stars, often repeatedly working with them. Charlotte Rampling, Isabelle Huppert, Catherine Deneuve, Sophie Marceau and Kristin Scott Thomas are just a few of the names who have popped up in his films. Ozon has completed an amazing 22 features in the 27 years since that 1998 debut, and won a string of awards: his 2012 drama In the House, about a teacher who becomes unhealthily involved in the life of a precocious and difficult student, is probably the most garlanded. His new film When Autumn Falls (AKA When Fall Is Coming in the US) stars Hélène Vincent in a story that starts off gently bucolic, then heads somewhere darker and more dangerous. So now's the time to ask Ozon a question in the comments below; we'll publish his replies in a fortnight. When Autumn Falls is in UK & Irish cinemas from 21 March.
