Tributes poured in yesterday for Nobel Prize-winning British playwright Harold Pinter, one of theater’s biggest names for nearly half a century, who died aged 78.
Pinter, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, had been suffering from cancer, and died on Thursday, his wife Lady Antonia Fraser and his agent said, with a small private funeral and memorial service to be held at a date to be announced.
“He was a great, and it was a privilege to live with him for over 33 years. He will never be forgotten,” Fraser told the Guardian newspaper.
His agent, Judy Daish, said in an e-mail that he died of cancer.
“A life-long campaigner for free speech and an uncompromising opponent of the Iraq war ... he lived just long enough to hear the Prime Minister [Gordon Brown] announce the final withdrawal of British troops from Iraq,” the Independent daily said of Pinter.
Brown announced last week that British troops would leave Iraq by the middle of next year.
“These were among the many sub-plots in a life’s drama that took him on an eventful personal journey from the east end of London to its West End — a drama on which the curtain has now, sadly, fallen for the last time,” the Independent said.
Pinter’s plays included The Birthday Party, The Dumb Waiter and The Homecoming. His first play, The Room, appeared in 1957 and his breakthrough came with The Caretaker in 1960.
They often featured the slang language of his native east London as well as his trademark menacing pauses. The adjective “Pinteresque,” referring to such characteristics, is included in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS