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The author said the EU had agreed to its largest-ever expansion of sanctions listings against Russia, targeting nearly 1,600 individuals and entities, including people and companies they said supported Russia’s military-industrial complex and war effort. #Sanctions #Russia #EU #EU #RU

LETTERE MERIDIANE — “TEATRO-EDICOLA” OF SAN SEVERO CONQUERS THE WORLD SOURCE: https://www.letteremeridiane.org/2026/10/il-teatro-edicola-di-san-severo-conquista-il-mondo/?fbclid=IwY2xjawU4oqFleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBwZG9mAXNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR5rVEwYs6UUXg7v-P0SyIQ_DRb_F6ZiY58OcseYoV4J7atcTiERnhWaqKM2pw_aem_Njle1jq1XLzHr93KLBUcVA After “Broadway World”, the “Los Angeles Journal”, “The Psychologist (British Psychological Association)” and Hollywood Beat Magazine, its “academic consecration” has now arrived courtesy of Stanford University. As I have already emphasised in my article on the revival of the GIO Festival in Foggia, celebrated by BroadwayWorld for the world stage premiere of the Giordano’s opera Marina (1888), the province of Foggia has long ceased to be peripheral. It happens when it finds an idea that shifts the coordinates: well, in San Severo, 40 kilometres from Foggia, it has happened again. Only this time an orchestra was not needed; six chairs were enough. The celebrated Teatro-Edicola of San Severo artistic director Francesco Gravino of the theatre company Foyer ’97 has been featured in the academic journal “Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR)” as an academic case study. The news, relayed on 19 September 2026 by ANSA Nazionale, looked like a misprint. Then it became clear that it was not. SSIR, an award-winning publication covering multisectoral solutions to global problems, included the project in its Dispatches section with the reportage “The Six-Seat Revolution”. It is the inverse trajectory to that of the GIO Festival: not a forgotten opera returning to a grand historic Italian horseshoe theatre, but an entire theatre reborn inside a disused place, forgotten by man. There are moments when past and future intertwine to create something visionary, innovative, artistically “revolutionary”: San Severo experienced one of those moments on the morning of 27 March 2026, during World Theatre Day, when the shutter of a newsstand closed for six years in Via Matteo Tondi was reopened “not to sell newspapers, but to offer stirring stories”, to quote Gravino’s motto. The idea of the visionary Francesco Gravino, artistic director, stage director and actor of the San Severo company Foyer ’97, active for at least 30 years in Capitanata, centred on the kiosk, hexagonal in metal and glass, granted free of charge by its owner Pino Frau, by now an urban relic created by the publishing crisis of the early 2000s: today in Italy active newsstands have fallen from about 35,000 in 2005 to about 20,000 in 2024, a decline of 42.8%. Gravino and eleven other actors restructured it in two weeks of work, without institutional funding, and transformed it into what is now under examination by the London commission of Guinness World Records as the “world’s smallest theatre”. The formula is deliberately austere: six spectators at a time outside, actors inside at less than a metre’s distance, 15-minute performances, continuous rotation from 11:00 to 20:45, texts ranging from Goldoni to Chekhov, from Ibsen to Dacia Maraini. On the door a QR code with an original theatrical warning: “Warning! This QR code transforms passers-by into actors. Scan only if ready.” The numbers immediately showed that it was no boutade: more than 60 people in a single afternoon, three inaugural days that sold out. But above all a positive echo that went beyond the borders of San Severo. “Broadway World” (just as in the previous case of the GIO Festival), the world’s most influential theatre criticism outlet with over 5.5 million monthly views, devoted exclusive coverage to it on 27 April 2026: “An Abandoned Italian Newsstand Just Became the World’s Smallest Theatre”. Not a mere listing, but an analysis: “There is no foyer, there is no balcony, there is no grid. There is barely a wing. What there is is something almost unrecognisable as an evening at the theatre, and for that very reason it is all the more powerful.” “Broadway World” captured Gravino’s manifesto idea: “This is a theatre of proximity. In an era of digital distance, we are putting human contact back at the centre,” framing it as “More than a clever exercise in site-specific theatre. It is a reappropriation.” All of this, in a Mezzogiorno of Italy often narrated only in terms of organised crime and marginalisation. To that seal of approval was added another, even more disorienting for a newsstand in San Severo: the “Los Angeles Journal”, one of the most influential publications on the West Coast for the performing arts. On 12 May 2026, it headlined thus: “San Severo’s Teatro-Edicola as an Innovative Model for Los Angeles Theaters?” opening as follows: “In a city in southern Italy that Hollywood has never heard of, a theatre director has just built the smallest stage in the world: six seats, fifteen minutes, zero distance. Los Angeles should pay attention.” The “Los Angeles Journal” does not indulge in folklore, but places the kiosk in Via Matteo Tondi alongside the prestigious 1,600-seat Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, the Pantages of Broadway in Hollywood, the 99-seat plan of Rogue Machine, the Odyssey, the Victory Theatre and the Hollywood Fringe. It even recalls Ethan Marks’s Electrical Box Theatre, a veritable electrical box lined with red velvet in downtown Los Angeles, to argue that Gravino has taken to the extreme the question Los Angeles has been asking itself for decades: How small can a stage become before it ceases to be a stage? And it recognizes the San Severo urban model: almost zero cost, two weeks of work and six chairs, in return for immediate provincial, regional and national media coverage, recognition by the San Severo’s Municipal Administration, and a format exportable anywhere. Then, the third American piece came from “Hollywood Beat Magazine” on 20 April 2026: Six seats. Fifteen minutes. One actor. No stage. The magazine recounts the kiosk in Via Tondi left disused for almost six years, the contemporary six-seat cultural outpost, placing Francesco Gravino in a distinguished genealogy: Richard Schechner and environmental theatre, Jerzy Grotowski and poor theatre, Nicolas Bourriaud and relational aesthetics. But it closes with pragmatism: it is not a thesis, it is fixing a street corner, that is, repairing an urban street corner by asking not how large a theatre can become, but how small it must become again to recover its original power. And finally, the celebrated London-based “The Psychologist”, the journal of the “British Psychological Society (BPS)”, the oldest psychological society in the world, transformed the Teatro-Edicola into a scientific case study: on 30 July 2026 it published “The world’s smallest theatre — and Psychologists’ next act”, starting from the same detail, the morning of 27 March when the metal shutter of the hexagonal kiosk in Via Tondi reopened after six years, six people inside, an actor at less than a metre’s distance beginning Chekhov. It describes the formula: six spectators, 15 minutes, 11 actors over 10 hours, from Goldoni to Euripides, inside a kiosk where the fourth wall does not break because architecturally it never existed. But the BPS goes a step further: it cites the 2025 studies by Damien Gabriel in IBRO Neuroscience Reports, that live performance generates measurably stronger emotional and physiological activation than video, and introduces Edward Hall’s proxemics: below one metre is intimate space, reserved for doctors, close friends, lovers. In that one-square-metre space, the actor’s breath is audible, micro-expressions legible, the self-other boundary becomes permeable. The Teatro-Edicola “does not make theatre better, it makes it inevitable”. And it is here that one understands why Stanford is studying it as an academic case study in social innovation, not as a case of artistic originality. In Italy, meanwhile, the national media circuit had already picked up the phenomenon: RaiNews — TG2 Storie brought it to RaiDue at midnight on 19 April. RTL 102.5 devoted space to the format conceived by Gravino and developed by Foyer ’97 in the heart of San Severo in Via Tondi, defining it as a permanent micro-stage capable of bringing theatre into public space. ANSA.it, Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, La Repubblica, TG2000, Radio Capital, Swiss RSI, ANSA Brazil and many others followed. And for the record: Fiorello praised it in La Pennicanza as an artistic case inspired by his Edicola Fiore, and Biagio Antonacci, on his tour in the Augustan amphitheatre of Lucera, made a “fact-finding” stop at the Teatro-Edicola singing the celebrated and nostalgic Iris in front of an audience certainly larger than the “six seats”. Francesco Gravino’s theatre company Foyer ’97 was not born yesterday: behind it lie the Teatro-Cantina of 2016, the underground theatre, and in 2011 a performance on the bell tower of a church in the centre of San Severo at 45 metres high. The Teatro-Edicola completes, in Gravino’s words, “the entire vertical extension of theatre: underground, street level, rooftop”. And it is preparing for its thirtieth anniversary in 2027 aiming to purchase the kiosk to make it permanent, exporting the “San Severo Model” to Rome, Lucca, and to the festivals of Santarcangelo and Todi. As with the GIO Festival, someone might dare to claim that it is merely a stunt, but when BroadwayWorld places you alongside the Los Angeles Opera House, the “Los Angeles Journa”l proposes you as a model for Hollywood, “Hollywood Beat Magazine” reads you through Grotowski and the “British Psychological Society” uses you to explain mirror neurones, it is no longer a stunt but an excellent artistic and academic positioning. To those who still whisper that Foggia and Capitanata are provincial, the answer is now written on two opposite and complementary fronts: on 5 June in Foggia a 138-year-old opera found the stage again at the Giordano ending up on BroadwayWorld; on 27 March in San Severo a 4-square-metre kiosk invented a stage that did not exist, ending up at Stanford, in Los Angeles, in Hollywood and in London. The periphery, when it has a precise idea, becomes the centre. Even with six chairs. Luciano Magaldi Sardella

The author argued that NATO should support Saudi Arabia in a time of need, citing a strategic partnership dating back to 1915, when Ibn Saud entered a formal relationship with Britain through the Treaty of Darin. They said the relationship deepened with the United States after 1945 and became a central pillar of the West. https://t.co/B1A03RtFRc #NATO #SaudiArabia #Partnership #SA #US #GB

The author claimed that more than 1,000 high-ranking Russians had taken luxury trips to Europe costing over €30,000, mostly to France, and that a third involved private jets. They asked why English-language media did not report on the trips and contrasted them with Russian propaganda portraying life in the EU as bad. #Russia #LuxuryTravel #MediaBias #RU #EU #FR

Thought I would share and hopefully make your day. The credit goes to the Danish artist, who made the sculpture "The Orange Plague" 🇩🇰 THE ORANGE PLAGUE: With his eyes closed and scales in hand, the Orange Plague proclaims: I am sitting on the back of a man. He is sinking under my burden. I will do anything to help him. Except stepping down from his back. #orangeplague You can print one yourself: https://makerworld.com/en/models/2344231-the-orange-plague-djt-donald-trump-statue#profileId-2562840 The artist encourages you to make copies and take pictures. Tag the pictures #orangeplague and tell where you took the picture

Gert wrote that he refueled in Goes the day before. A man at the gas station asked his wife if he could give her a compliment. When she asked why, the man, according to Gert, said he complimented her for still daring to visibly wear a Star of David. https://t.co/057wXQw4dI #Goes #Davidster #compliment (translated)

The post said Raphinha had signed a new contract with Barcelona until June 2030, with the deal finalised with his representatives and lawyers. It said an official announcement and ceremony could take place this week, possibly on Friday if the documents were completed as planned. https://t.co/fol5EmHtk1 #FCBarcelona #Raphinha #FootballNews #ES

The author said the research could help scientists identify links between brain cells and functions, memories and behaviour, and better understand conditions such as dementia, epilepsy and addiction. They added that this knowledge could lead to new approaches to diagnosis and treatment and improve outcomes for patients.

The author wrote that the 2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine had gone to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for discoveries involving light-gated ion channels and optogenetics. They described optogenetics as using light to control neurons and reveal how brain circuits shape memory, emotion and behaviour.

The author said communities lost access to trusted information when a media outlet went dark. The post invited readers to join UNDRR, UNESCO and IFRC on 14 October in Geneva or online for a #DRRDay event on how supporting the media could strengthen risk communication. It included a registration link.

Ultras Clips reported that supporters of Hamburger SV and FC København paid tribute to 26-year-old FC København fan Mathias Blindbæk Schlüter during a friendly match. The author said Schlüter died in a traffic accident on September 22 and had helped foster a close friendship between the clubs’ fan groups. Supporters of both teams displayed banners honouring him, with messages in German and Danish that meant “Mathias forever,” Ultras Clips wrote. #Fodbold #SupporterKultur #Solidaritet (translated)

Moe (stylized as moe.) is an American jam rock band, formed at the University at Buffalo in 1989. The band members are Rob Derhak (bass, vocals), Al Schnier (guitar, vocals, keyboard), Chuck Garvey (guitar, vocals), Vinnie Amico (drums), and Jim Loughlin (percussion). The band's first record, Fatboy (1992), established the band as a favorite of the 1990s jam band and improvisational rock scene, which grew in popularity with the rise of bands such as Phish and Widespread Panic. Moe toured with the Furthur Festival in 1997, appeared at Woodstock '99, played Summerstage at the Rumsey Playfield in Central Park, opened for The Allman Brothers and The Who. The origin of the band goes back as far as October 1989, when Chuck Garvey, Rob Derhak, and Ray Schwartz got together to play a Halloween show at a friend's behest. https://hvdommelen.nl/m/moe.html

The author linked barbarism with ignorance and argued that Russia, as an aggressor state that violated international law, could not deny Ukraine the right to self-defence, including with weapons supplied by countries not involved in the war. The author also questioned whether the principle was too difficult for the Kremlin to understand. #Ukraine #Russia #InternationalLaw #RU #UA