Ambition

It’s impossible not to smile along with this feelgood documentary about four Zimbabwean refugees in South Africa who got jobs in restaurants, discovered in themselves a brilliant talent for wine-tasting and in 2017 were brought together as the exiled team Zimbabwe for the World Blind Wine Tasting Championships in France, with the help of expatriate French sommelier Jean Vincent Ridon and wine guru Jancis Robinson who masterminded the crowdfunded sponsorship.It’s almost too perfectly contoured as a Hollywood narrative: has…

The third instalment in Black Midi’s war against being put on as background music is their most ambitious yet. A concept album broadly about death and the afterlife that also takes in wrestling and contract killings, it’s dizzying in its ambition, pinballing between genres within a single breath. The standout The Race Is About to Begin lifts the opening riff from the Minutemen’s Viet Nam before taking off in a high-speed free-jazz/prog/metal direction. Bravura musicianship treads a fine line between precision and chaos,…

To meet the extremely ambitious CO2 reduction goals agreed on Tuesday night by European environment ministers, the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) is calling for drastic action on charging infrastructure. ACEA said it respected the council’s decision but said it come with major implications, not only for the auto industry but also for the EU economy as a whole. European automobile manufacturers have…

Amid global health crisis becoming a major concern since Covid-19 pandemic began, women, children and adolescents, and the health and aid workers who provide their care and support, are facing growing challenges and life-threatening risks, in these times of escalating conflict and humanitarian crises worldwide, according to a commentary published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) this week to coincide with World Immunisation Week from April 24 to April 30. The theme of World…