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Residents of Mende Estate Villa in the Maryland area of Lagos State have decried the recent demolition of their multimillion naira houses in the area by the Lagos State Government while seeking compensation for a new shelter.

Our correspondent, who visited the area on Sunday, observed how the estate’s homes were destroyed and how the occupants hastily packed their possessions to leave.

Speaking with PUNCH Metro, some residents bemoaned how terrible it was to exit their houses without having a backup plan and a comfortable place to sleep.

PUNCH Metro had reported that the state Commissioner of Environment and Water Resources, Tokunbo Wahab, had said the demolition was needed to reclaim the Odo Iya Laro drainage channel.

Also, a popular Nigerian singer, Yemi Alade, had decried the demolition carried out at the estate while stating that such action would discourage those interested in investing in real estate in the state.

A member of the resident association who pleaded anonymity claimed that the residents tried to negotiate with the Lagos State Government but were ignored and that they were not given any prior notice before the demolition began on Saturday.

Panamanians are voting in a general election which has been overshadowed by the disqualification of the man who was leading in the polls. Ex-President Ricardo Martinelli was the favourite to win until he was banned from running after being found guilty of money laundering.

His replacement on the ballot, José Raúl Mulino, is leading in the polls.

Whoever wins most of the votes in this round will be declared president and sworn in on 1 July.

There are a total of eight candidates competing for the presidency, and voters will also choose members of Panama's national assembly.

As presidents cannot serve two consecutive terms, the incumbent, Laurentino "Nito" Cortizo, will not stand for re-election.

The storms also triggered landslides and the partial collapse of a dam structure at a small hydro-electric power plant. Flooding from heavy rains battering Brazil's southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul has killed 39 people, according to local authorities, with the death toll expected to rise as dozens remain unaccounted-for.

Rio Grande do Sul's civil defence authority said 68 people were still missing and at least 24,000 had been displaced as the storms affected more than half of the 497 cities in the state, which borders Uruguay and Argentina.

"These numbers can still materially change over the following days as we gain access to more regions," the state's governor, Eduardo Leite, told reporters on Friday local time.

Found this Arthouse film trailer via @lookluc who is the film's director. I really like the oversaturation, it's lush.

Struggling if the existence of his love is real or not, Matthew embarks on a train journey to find it. As he travels without a fixed destination and searches for his beloved, he begins to hallucinate between imagination and reality, trying to realise which is which. Was it true love or just metaphysical?

A Manitoba First Nations has declared a state of emergency in response to the ongoing health crisis impacting the community. The chief of Peguis First Nation, in Manitoba’s Interlake area, says the crisis is directly linked to devastating floods, the worst of which came in 2022.

“This declaration is driven by a severe crisis that affects not just our land and homes, but the very spirit and mental well-being of our people,” said Chief Dr. Stan Bird.

Peguis First Nation has endured persistent flooding over the years, resulting in damage to infrastructure and housing. Two years after one of the worst floods to ever hit the community, damage still remains.

This BFI recommendations page offers "a beginner’s path through the hilarious and heart-wrenching tragicomic dramas of British director Mike Leigh".

Jeff Bridges' addition to the Tron: Ares cast marks his first return to a feature film since 2018's Bad Times at the El Royale. The acclaimed actor has starred in nearly 100 different films and television series since he made his onscreen appearance in the classic television series Sea Hunt (1958 - 1961) alongside his father, Lloyd Bridges, who was in the leading role. Bridges has been nominated for Best Actor seven times throughout his illustrious career, winning for Crazy Heart in 2010.

Bridges' most recent Oscar nomination was for Supporting Actor for 2016's celebrated heist western Hell or High Water starring Chris Pine and Ben Foster. Since then, Bridges has had a supporting role in the 2017 drama The Only Living Boy in New York and the 2017 action disaster movie Only the Brave starring Josh Brolin and Miles Teller. Bridges notably played Champ in Matthew Vaughn's Kingsman: The Golden Circle before playing Father Daniel Flynn / Dock O'Kelly in Bad Times at the El Royale in 2018.

For the Nobel laureate Denis Mukwege, who has treated more than 80,000 survivors of sexual violence by armed groups, the west displays double standards over the ‘stain on our humanity’. Walking around a camp for displaced people in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo this year, the Nobel peace laureate Dr Denis Mukwege was filled with shame. Around him were women, many of them survivors of rape, living in destitution with no access to clean water or to any protection.

The women had left their homes after fighting between the Congolese army and the M23 rebel group resumed in North Kivu province three years ago. Since then, aid agencies have reported an increase in sexual violence in the region. In April last year, the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières said it was treating 48 new survivors a day among the displaced people living in camps around the city of Goma.

“The situation of women and young girls in Goma is a stain on our humanity,” the renowned gynaecologist says. “I think we should all feel ashamed to see these women abandoned.

Via @boem

A newlywed husband causes chaos whenever he falls asleep, to the distress of his pregnant wife, in Jason Yu's Korean horror film. Watch the trailer at Empire.

US research suggests that 92 minutes is the optimum length for a film. But I have sat through long films that felt short and short films that felt buttock-annihilatingly long.

Excerpt:

I can only say I have taken on films of buttock-annihilating, bladder-stress-testing massiveness. Bela Tarr’s mysterious black-and-white Hungarian meisterwerk Sátántangó weighs in at 439 minutes and if you’re already trying to divide that by 60 in your head and work out how many hours it is, then forget it, you’re too much of a lightweight. And only a lightweight wants loo breaks or food breaks. The original uncut version of Erich Von Stroheim’s silent 1924 masterpiece Greed went on “all day” at its single screening for awestruck critics and aghast executives, with the master himself reportedly sitting at the back scowling at anyone who dared ducking out to visit the restroom.

That said, an hour and a half isn’t a bad proportion. My late predecessor Derek Malcolm told me that 10% can be cut out of any film, no matter how long it is, and then 10% of that, and again, so that a film – like Zeno’s arrow – approaches a sublime existential state of brevity. In truth, there’s something to be said for the 92-minute idea. Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter is 92 minutes. So is Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata, Howard Hawks’s His Girl Friday, Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, Anthony Mann’s Winchester ’73, Pete Docter’s Monsters, Inc, and Kevin Smith’s Clerks.

The Japanese government is planning to trial an artificial intelligence system for spotting wild bears to better deal with an increasing number of attacks by the animals on humans, a government source said Monday. Under the system, AI will use security camera footage to instantly detect bears and share the information with the relevant authorities. The pilot scheme is planned to begin by summer in Toyama Prefecture, central Japan.

If found to be effective, the AI system could be rolled out to prefectures where frequent bear sightings near residential areas have been reported, the source said.

The plan comes in response to the 198 bear attacks on humans across 19 prefectures in the previous fiscal year, which ended in March. The incidents resulted in 219 casualties including six deaths, record highs since fiscal 2006 when comparable data became available.

The suffering of the Sudanese may be off camera now, but it won't be in a few months when babies are starving en masse.