Dvorak's tale of forbidden fruit in the forest is impressively sung and bewitchingly staged

Melly Still, Director, and singers Ana Mara Martnez, and her on-stage Prince, Brandon Jovanovich, discuss the new Festival production of Dvorák's Rusalka with Edward Seckerson.

It helps to have a masterpiece as your starting point – and Dvorak’s Rusalka is certainly that – but when you’ve a director as painfully honest and unpretentious as Melly Still and a conductor, in Jiri Belohlavek, whose intent is not merely to conduct the piece but to honour it as a treasured part of his heritage, then we’re talking a very special alchemy around what we hear, see, and feel.

Patrick Mercer OBE, politician

Serves 4

Linesman Plamen Georgiev saved midfielder Georgi Iliev's life after he collapsed and swallowed his tongue during a Bulgarian league match.

Pirates have seized a Greek-owned cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia, Greece's Merchant Marine Ministry said today.

Perhaps you've turned to the gardening pages to get away from recession fever and banker phobia. Bad luck. But gardeners are surely in a fortunate position. The value of the patches we look out on every day – the real value I mean, not some notional price per square foot dreamed up by a wonky estate agent – doesn't zoom up and down because of events out of our control. Its pleasures don't diminish because the stock market is dropping like lead. The plant for which you paid £2.50 yesterday is still worth that today (in fact it is surely worth three times that – the cheapness of plants is one of life's great mysteries).

An explosion ripped through an apartment building in southern Ukraine, killing 19 people. A further 24 people are still unaccounted for, and officials expect the death toll to rise. Twenty-one residents were pulled out alive from the five-storey block in the Black Sea resort of Yevpatoria. The blast, probably caused by canisters of oxygen stored in the basement, flattened all five floors, leaving rubble several metres high strewn with wires, smashed furniture and personal possessions. "As I was walking by, I heard a bang, and then I saw this building crumble," one witness said. Another, who lived opposite the apartment block, said: "We heard a terrible bang. We thought our balcony crashed because of the way the windows vibrated. But when I went on to the balcony I saw smoke from the other side." President Viktor Yushchenko and the Prime Minister, Julia Tymoshenko, set aside their feuding to arrive at the scene together. Mr Yushchenko declared today a national day of mourning. Casualties caused by gas blasts in often crumbling apartment buildings are common occurrences in former Soviet republics, particularly in winter when residents use more heating. Reuters

A new ant which was discovered less than 20 years ago could be on the way to wreak havoc in parks and gardens of Northern Europe including Britain, according to a report published today.

The first U.S. warship to bring aid to Georgia arrived in the country's main Black Sea port of Batumi on Sunday, in a gesture of support for the ex-Soviet republic in its conflict with Russia.

Russian soldiers held positions deep inside Georgia's heartland today, drawing accusations from Washington that Moscow's military pullback did not match up to what it had promised.

Russian soldiers today held blindfolded Georgian servicemen at gunpoint and commandeered US Humvees in a dramatic sequence of events in Poti, a key Black Sea port.

Magnificent palaces, mosques and markets are Istanbul's most obvious attractions. But while revisiting the city, Linda Cookson instead faced seawards – and found a world of surprises on the waterway that divides East and West