What happened
Patrick Stewart, the British actor celebrated for his Shakespearean performances and popular science-fiction roles, has passed away at the age of 86. He died at his Los Angeles home on Wednesday following a period living with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia, according to his spokesperson.

Stewart’s career began on the British stage, including 16 years with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He won two Laurence Olivier Awards and published his memoir, “Making It So”, in 2023.

Stewart became an international star as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, playing the commander of the USS Enterprise across seven television series and four films. He later portrayed Professor Charles Xavier in seven “X-Men” films.

Who said what
Fellow Star Trek actor William Shatner praised Stewart’s intelligence, grace and humanity, saying Picard represented “the best of us, and so did the man who played him”.

With his “authoritative baritone voice and commanding visage”, Stewart was already a “staple of the British stage” by the late 1980s when, at 47, he was cast in “Star Trek”, said Adrian Horton in The Guardian. His performance “turned him into a global star”.

What next?
Stewart is survived by his third wife Sunny Ozell and two adult children – Daniel and Sophia – that he shared with first wife Sheila Falconer.

What happened
The latest “Call of Duty” video game has provoked outrage among families of victims of an overcrowding disaster in South Korea. A scene from “Modern Warfare 4” uses real footage of the aftermath of the crush in Seoul’s narrow streets on Halloween in 2022 – where 160 people died – to depict the deadly consequences of an imagined attack by North Korea.

Who said what
We “cannot help but be appalled that the chaotic and desperate scene” was used for entertainment, said the families in a statement. It’s “highly inappropriate and senseless”; the developers should “take corrective action” and delete the scene.

Actual news coverage had been used to “establish the game’s fictional narrative”, said a spokesperson from its maker Activision, adding that it was “not intended to reference or trivialise the Itaewon disaster or any other real-world tragedy”.

What next?
The game’s premise had already provoked controversy given the escalating tensions between North and South Korea. South Korean opposition politicians have urged President Lee Jae Myung to play the game in order to experience the consequences of what they describe as his “overly conciliatory approach” to Pyongyang, said The Korea Herald.

Bougainville could soon gain its independence, three decades after a brutal civil war, and seven years since the resource-rich islands overwhelmingly voted to secede from Papua New Guinea.

Parliamentarians in Papua New Guinea will vote next month on whether to grant full self-determination to the autonomous and ethnically distinct islands that are home to about 350,000 people.

After years of being controlled by colonising nations as varied as Britain, Germany, Australia and Japan, Bougainville first declared its independence – as the Republic of the North Solomons – in 1975. But within weeks it was incorporated into the newly independent nation of Papua New Guinea.

In the following decades the islands’ politics – and push for greater autonomy – became inextricably linked to its vast Panguna copper and gold mine. Anger that less than 2% of the wealth generated by the internationally run concession went to the local community “spiralled into a decade-long civil war in the main island’s jungles as a rag-tag separatist militia held Papua New Guinea’s military at bay”, said The New York Times.

A peace agreement in 2001 formally brought the fighting to an end. It established a measure of autonomy for Bougainville and, crucially, a commitment from Papua New Guinea to allow an independence referendum. This was held in 2019, and 97.7% of Bougainvilleans voted for self-government.

Many Bougainvilleans now think that the ultimate route to economic self-reliance lies in “rehabilitating” the Panguna mine, which was closed by multiple acts of sabotage in 1989. Bougainville’s President Ishmael Toroama is already pursuing such a redevelopment and has signalled his intention to “separate from the state of Papua New Guinea” in 203o, whether Port Moresby ratifies Bougainville’s independence or not.