No matter how powerful, dictators have always needed subordinates—censors, propagandists, security guards, police officers, intelligence analysts, and local bureaucrats—to carry out their orders.
—
Seva Gunitsky,
Foreign Affairs,
1 Oct. 2026
Investigators have accused one of his subordinates of running a fraud scheme, though Kravchenko himself has not been charged or named a suspect.
Banks paid millions of dollars by today’s standards to bring along a botanist, artists, servants, his greyhound and scientific equipment.
—
Saar Shahar,
The Conversation,
12 Oct. 2026
The remains of these servants, or retainers, were first excavated from the funerary complexes at Abydos, eastern Egypt, which date from around 3000 BC, in the 1920s.
Deadline can reveal that the Line of Duty showrunner is spearheading a bid to produce Doctor Who after the BBC launched a competitive tender, a bake-off-style process in which producers have put forward plans to regenerate the iconic sci-fi series.
—
Max Goldbart,
Deadline,
7 Oct. 2026
But up here on the terraces of the Anantara Grand Hotel Convento di Amalfi, the shrieks of day-tripping cruise passengers, zipping back and forth in Tango-orange tenders, are pleasantly faint.
Ellison is said to be a boss who is loyal to his underlings, particularly with his own hires.
—
Michael Schneider,
Variety,
30 Sep. 2026
Later, Bianco directed his underlings to begin counting those ballots by hand — a potential felony under state law, which forbids anyone other than election officials from so much as touching a ballot container.
There was a procession to the church of white clad handmaidens (tärnor), star boys (stjärngossar) and gingerbread men (pepparkaksgubbar) with candle wreaths on the maidens’ heads – now battery powered rather than actual flames.
—
Natasha Langan,
TheWeek,
29 Sep. 2026
Did Penelope, Helen of Troy, Athena, Calypso, and the rest of the Greek gals and goddesses deserve to be more epic than the attractive but flattened handmaidens even IMAX couldn’t enhance?
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