Briefly

CAMBODIA

The Composer wins Best Film at festival

The film The Composer (China/Kazakhstan) won the Golden Rumdul Award for Best Film at the second Cambodia-Asia Film Festival in Phnom Penh on Saturday. The film, directed by Xirzat Yahup, depicts the life of Chinese musician Xian Xinghai in Almaty, Kazakhstan. During a meeting with the film's producer, Shen Jian, Chinese Ambassador to Cambodia Wang Wenbin praised The Composer for its role in advancing the Belt and Road Initiative and enhancing people-to-people connections. As 2024 is designated as the Cambodia-China People-to-People Exchange Year, the film festival seeks to foster cultural exchanges between Cambodia and other Asian countries while supporting the growth of the Asian film industry.

UNITED STATES

Starliner astronauts to return next year

Two NASA astronauts who flew to the International Space Station in June aboard Boeing's faulty Starliner capsule will have to stay six more months and return home on a SpaceX vehicle, NASA said on Saturday, in a fresh public relations blow to the crisis-hit aviation giant. The return of Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita "Suni" Williams had already been delayed for weeks by thruster malfunctions of the Boeing spacecraft, and NASA said they will return to Earth in February, while Starliner will return uncrewed.

ITALY

Manslaughter probe into yacht sinking

An Italian prosecutor has opened a manslaughter investigation into the deaths of British tech magnate Mike Lynch and six other people who were killed when a yacht sank off Sicily last week. The head of the public prosecutor's office of Termini Imerese, Ambrogio Cartosio, said that while the yacht had been hit by a very sudden meteorological event, it was "plausible" that crimes of multiple manslaughter and causing a shipwreck through negligence had been committed.

Agencies - Xinhua