Month: September 2018

Hikers have embarked on a 500-mile (805-kilometer) expedition that will traverse New Mexico. The mission: Chart out the best route and identify what challenges might lie ahead as the state moves closer to establishing the Rio Grande Trail.

Following in the footsteps of other states, New Mexico is looking to capitalize on its vistas, mild weather and culture with the creation of a long-distance trail along one of North America’s longest rivers.

The Rio Grande stretches down the middle of the state, from the southern end of the Rocky Mountains near the Colorado state line to the bustling desert region where New Mexico and Texas intersect with the U.S.-Mexico border.

Supporters say that with its diverse scenery, the Rio Grande Trail has the potential to make the list of the country’s more famous long-distance routes, including the Appalachian Trail that runs from Georgia to Maine and the Continental Divide Trail that crosses a handful of Western states. Neighboring Colorado and Arizona have their own namesake trails and there are several others that are designed as national scenic trails.

Outdoor recreation in New Mexico alone is already a multibillion-dollar industry and the benefits of the Rio Grande Trail could be profound, said Jeff Steinborn, a New Mexico state senator who pushed legislation in 2015 to create the commission charged with establishing the trail.

“We can’t even begin to appreciate all the opportunities that it will unfold for our citizens, for economic development and for frontier communities,” he said.

Appalachian study

In the East, more than 3 million people visit some part of the Appalachian Trail annually. The trail’s advocacy group is working on a study to better determine the spending that results from those visits and the branding campaigns that go along with such long-distance trail systems.

Jordan Bowman, a spokesman for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, said it’s all tied to the draw of experiencing the American backcountry.

“It’s whatever adventure you want to make out of it,” he said. “So people can find a nice smooth section if they just need to get out for an afternoon or it can be a monthslong adventure where you walk out with a beard and this incredible story of how you survived a blizzard or whatever the case may be.”

In New Mexico, the Rio Grande Trail Commission last week approved an official logo, and a master plan is in the works.

While the official alignment has yet to be decided, this month’s expedition by volunteers with the Southern New Mexico Trail Alliance is aimed at scouting proposed segments and gathering as much data about water sources, camping spots, supply stops and not-to-be-missed scenery that could be incorporated.

“A lot of those little details we can’t pick up until we’re actually there on the ground walking it,” said Peter Livingstone with the alliance.

He has traveled more than 120 miles (190 kilometers) in five days. He expects the whole trip to take about a month.

A small solar panel sits on the top of his backpack, charging a collection of GPS and satellite communication devices that are tracking the journey.

Just in case

“I have a map and compass if all that fancy stuff fails,” Livingstone said.

The expedition so far has taken him along the volcanic ridge that makes up the Rio Grande Gorge near Taos. To the west, there are numerous homes dubbed earthships built out of recycled materials. Wheeler Peak — the highest in New Mexico — is visible to the east.

Livingstone also talked about petroglyphs, adobe churches, driving rain, hail and being greeted by locals with beans, rice and tacos.

“Life is a wonderful adventure, or it is nothing,” he said in a recent post.

The trek will end near Mount Cristo Rey, where the faithful make a religious pilgrimage each year. Steinborn plans to join the hikers there.

Close to 50 miles (80 kilometers) or more of trail already have been designated and there are another 100 miles (160 kilometers) or so being planned with the federal government and conservancy districts in the Middle Rio Grande, Steinborn said.

“There’s work to be done, but what an incredible start. It’s coming to life in front of our eyes,” he said. 
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Actor Burt Reynolds, the charismatic star whose career lasted for more than half a century, died Thursday at 82.

His agent announced the actor’s death in Jupiter, Florida, but did not give a cause.

The rugged, mustached, handsome Reynolds was an icon of 1970s America and its fixation on Hollywood celebrities.

Michigan-born Reynolds was a college football star in Florida and appeared headed for a professional sports career before he was injured in a car crash.

He worked in a number of jobs before turning to acting in Florida and New York, and eventually to Hollywood and numerous television roles.

His big break came in 1972 when he was cast in the hit movie Deliverance, about a canoe trip turned violent.

The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, and Reynolds’ performance was widely praised.

His decision to pose nude for Cosmopolitan magazine turned him into a TV personality and fodder for jokes. 

Reynolds said he posed nude as a gag, but later called it a mistake because he said it distracted from his ambitions to be a respected actor.

He continued to star in dozens of films throughout the 1970s, such as Cannonball Run and the Smokey and the Bandit series.

He also made tabloid headlines with his marriages, divorces and affairs with actresses Judy Carne, Sally Field and Loni Anderson, and singer Dinah Shore, who was 20 years his senior.

Reynolds’ career fizzled in the 1980s, but he made a comeback in 1991 when he won an Emmy award for the television comedy Evening Shade. In 1998, he was a nominee for Best Supporting Actor for the movie Boogie Nights.
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Britain’s Burberry will no longer burn unsold luxury goods to protect its brand after an admission that it destroyed almost $40 million worth of stock last year sparked a furor over waste in the fashion industry.

Burberry also said on Thursday it would no longer use real fur such as mink and racoon, in another step towards improving its social and environmental credentials which was immediately welcomed by animal rights campaigners.

The waste revelation in July from Burberry came only months after the owner of Cartier and Montblanc admitted to destroying some of their unsold watches and coincides with growing public awareness of waste and its environmental impact.

“Modern luxury means being socially and environmentally responsible,” said CEO Marco Gobbetti, who is taking Burberry more upmarket. Its coats sell for more than 2,500 pounds ($3,234) and handbags are priced at up to 1,500 pounds.

Many retailers have been called out in recent years for destroying unsold stock, including by slashing or punching holes in garments before throwing them out.

Richemont, owner of luxury watch brands, said it bought back unsold stock from dealers during a recent downturn and recycled the precious metals and stones that were in the high-end pieces.

Burberry physically destroyed 28.6 million pounds worth of finished goods in the financial year to April, up from 26.9 million pounds the previous year, including 10 million pounds worth of beauty products such as perfume.

The products are generally those that did not sell via discount outlets and are more than five years old. Burberry said it would try to reuse, repair, donate or recycle its products while a strategy to make fewer, more targeted collections should help reduce excess stock.

It is also working with the sustainable luxury company Elvis & Kresse to transform 120 tonnes of leather offcuts into new products over the next five years.

Growing awareness

Exane BNP Paribas analyst Luca Solca said Burberry’s announcement could put pressure on other luxury names to be more transparent about how they handle unsold goods.

“Concerns about sustainability are slowly but surely becoming more relevant for luxury goods consumers,” he said. Some luxury groups offer sales to employees and journalists to limit unsold stock. Both Kering, owner of Gucci and Alexander McQueen, and LVMH, owner of Louis Vuitton, Celine, Christian Dior and Givenchy, declined to comment.

Chanel said it did everything it could to avoid destroying stock, including selling items from previous collections to employees and partners, and starting production on goods once it has received orders from buyers.

The issue of excess stock is, in volume terms, a much bigger problem in the mass market, where retailers and consumers churn rapidly through different styles.

Greenpeace says 73 percent of textile fibers used to produce more than 100 billion garments each year end up in landfill or incinerators after they have been used.

H&M, the world’s second-biggest fashion retailer after Inditex, has said in the past it burns stock, but only when it is damaged or, for example, has high levels of chemicals in it. At the end of May the Swedish group had $4 billon of unsold stock that it said it hoped to sell.

“Under no circumstances do we destroy clothes that are safe to use,” a spokeswoman said. Britain’s Primark said unsold products and samples were donated to charity.

Burberry is following the likes of Versace, Gucci and the trailblazer for ethical fashion, Stella McCartney, in removing real fur from its ranges.

The moves are part of a series of changes at Burberry where Gobbetti is pinning his hopes on new designer Riccardo Tisci to transform the quintessentially British fashion house. Former Givenchy star Tisci has previously designed costumes for Beyonce and Madonna and releases his debut collection in September.

“We are committed to applying the same creativity to all parts of Burberry as we do to our products,” Gobbetti said. PETA, the campaign group for the ethical treatment of animals, welcomed Burberry’s move to stop using fur, which it said was a sign of the times.

“The few fashion houses refusing to modernize and listen to the overwhelming public opinion against fur are now sticking out like a sore thumb for all the wrong reasons,” PETA’s director of international programs, Mimi Bekhechi said.

Campaign group Humane Society International said animal charities would unite during this year’s major fashion shows to call on Italian brand Prada to follow Burberry’s lead.

The head of the International Fur Federation, Mark Oaten, said substituting natural fur with “plastic petroleum-based materials, like fake fur” was neither luxury nor responsible.

($1 = 0.7736 pounds)
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New York Fashion Week has opened its glamorous tent wider to feature models with disabilities wearing adaptive clothing designs by Tommy Hilfiger, Nike and Target.

Organized by the Runway of Dreams Foundation, the show on Wednesday included a catwalk welcoming to wheelchairs, crutches, walking canes and more. Actor and model RJ Mitte of “Breaking Bad” was host.

Mitte said he understood the importance of inclusion on a personal level, having been diagnosed with cerebral palsy at age 3. “I’m really excited to see all this inclusivity and all of these strides to be diverse,” he said.

The founder of Runway of Dreams, Mindy Scheier, was inspired to start her foundation when her son, Oliver, who has muscular dystrophy, told her he wanted to wear clothes like everyone else. His request was for blue jeans — a clothing item that would prove difficult to pull on and off with his condition unless the pants were modified. She decided to make him an adaptive pair on her own and realized the need for more adaptive clothing lines for individuals with disabilities.

“Fashion is a direct correlation to how we feel about ourselves, our confidence, our self-esteem,” said Scheier. “And if you don’t have that, if you don’t have options, it can really affect how you feel about yourself. So truly, clothing is a basic need. So, shouldn’t we all feel really good and have options like everybody else?”

Model Mama Cax, recently featured on the cover of Teen Vogue’s September issue for “The New Faces of Fashion,” lost her leg during a battle with cancer. She is now an advocate for inclusion in the fashion industry and walked the runway Wednesday.

She said she wanted to see people with disabilities cast in movies and TV in lead roles or as love interests but without any “inspiration piece attached to it,” adding: “We want to see them in a normal role, average role, like we do in our everyday lives.”

Jason Redman never expected to find himself at a fashion show. Redman was a U.S. Navy SEAL who suffered injury to his face and body when he was struck by machine gun fire during a special operative mission in Iraq. He received the Inspirational Achievement Award for the clothing company he founded, Wounded Wear.

“People underestimate the power of clothing, the power of wanting to feel good and look like everybody else around us. And that’s what this organization does. So to be here, to be an awardee, to be a part of it, it’s pretty awesome.”
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Egypt’s Antiquities Ministry says a preliminary report shows that the fire that engulfed Brazil’s National Museum destroyed all of its artifacts including those in the pharaonic hall, which contained 700 pieces.

 

Thursday’s statement says Egypt’s diplomatic missions in Brazil are communicating with the museum’s Egyptology department head to know the precise damages to Egyptian holdings.

 

Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, says the pieces were largely bought by Brazil’s emperor, Dom Pedro I, from antiquities traders in the 19th century.

 

He says they include five mummies, one of which was offered in its original coffin to Dom Pedro II by Egyptian Viceroy Ismail Pasha during a visit to the Middle East.

 

Flames tore through the 200-year-old museum, which contained some 20 million items, on Sunday.
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Brazil’s National Museum said Wednesday that centuries-old Torah scrolls, considered to be some of Judaism’s oldest documents, had been moved before a massive fire ravaged the place and gutted much of the largest collections of national history artifacts in Latin America. 

Questions about the fate of the scrolls had swirled since Sunday night’s blaze at the museum, which used to be the home of Brazil’s royal family. Amid an ongoing investigation and unable to access much of the now destroyed museum, officials have been reluctant to give any account of how specific artifacts fared in the fire or disclose information on other material that may have been in other locations. 

“The Torah is being kept in a safe place,” according to a museum statement sent to The Associated Press on Wednesday, adding it had been removed nearly two years ago. The statement did not say where it had been transferred.

A spokesman at the Israeli Embassy in the capital Brasilia said it didn’t have more information on the Torah, Judaism’s holy book.

Brazilian scholars have said the scrolls originated in Yemen and possibly date back to the 13th century.

The museum’s website says the nine scrolls, written in Hebrew, were acquired in the early 19th century by the country’s last monarch, Dom Pedro II. The website, which had apparently not been updated, also said the scrolls were not part of an exhibit, but rather kept in a safe in the director’s office. 

Avraham Beuthner, from the Jewish organization Beit Lubavitch in Rio de Janeiro, told the AP that university officials told him the Torah was being housed at a university library near the museum. The museum is part of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. 

Beuthner said he had been fielding calls from Jews in Israel and several Latin American countries since the fire inquiring about the relic.

“Thank God it’s safe,” he said, adding that university officials had promised to soon allow Jewish community leaders to see where the Torah is being held.

 

The good news came as museum officials said they feared as much as 90 percent of Latin America’s largest collection of treasures might have been lost in the fire. Aerial photos of the main building showed only heaps of rubble and ashes in the parts of the building where the roof collapsed. 

Firefighters on Tuesday “found fragments of bones in a room where the museum kept many items, including skulls,” said Cristiana Serejo, the museum’s deputy director. “We still have to collect them and take them to the lab to know exactly what they are.” 

In its collection of about 20 million items, one of the most prized possessions is a skull called Luzia, which is among the oldest fossils ever found in the Americas.

With the cause of the fire still under investigation, the disaster has led to a series of recriminations amid accusations that successive governments haven’t sufficiently funded the museum, and it has raised concerns that other institutions might be at risk. Officials have said it was well known that the building was vulnerable to fire and in need of extensive repair.

A UNESCO group of specialists in recovery and reconstruction are expected to arrive in Brazil next week, according Maria Edileuza Fontele Reis, the organization’s ambassador in Brazil. 

The group “has experience working with pieces of national heritage in areas of war, such as in Iraq, and areas impacted by fire,” Fontele Reis told the AP in a phone interview.
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Reality television star Kim Kardashian West, who successfully pushed President Donald Trump to grant a pardon for a drug offender earlier this year, returned to the White House on Wednesday for a meeting with senior aides as part of the administration’s efforts on criminal justice reform.

 

       Kardashian West, who may have felt right at home with the drama-infused atmosphere in the West Wing as it grapples with the fallout from Bob Woodward’s new book, participated in a listening session on clemency and prison reform with several staffers, including the president’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

 

       “The discussion is mainly focused on ways to improve that process to ensure deserving cases receive a fair review,” according to Hogan Gidley, White House deputy press secretary.

 

       Among the others in attendance were CNN commentator Van Jones, Shon Hopwood, a lawyer who served time in prison for bank robbery and Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, who has been instrumental in steering Trump’s Supreme Court picks, including Brett Kavanaugh, whose confirmation hearings have begun on Capitol Hill.

       But the headliner was Kardashian West, who last visited the White House three months ago to press for a pardon for 63-year-old Alice Marie Johnson. At the time, the reality star, dressed in black, posed for an instantly iconic — and seemingly somber — photo with Trump in the Oval Office, though there were no plans for her to meet with the president on Wednesday.

 

       One week after Kardashian West’s visit, Trump granted Johnson clemency, freeing her from prison after a more than two-decade stint on drug charges.

 

       “When I looked at Alice, I said we can’t just stop with one person. We have to change the laws,” Kardashian West said in a statement released by (hash)cut50, a group that looks to reduce incarceration time.

 

       The pardon for Johnson was one of several instances where the president has used his constitutional power to pardon federal crimes. Trump in May pardoned conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza and suggested he was considering a commutation for former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and a pardon for lifestyle guru Martha Stewart. He has not yet acted on either front.

 

       “We are working to build support for prison reform, sentencing reform, and fair treatment of people coming home from prison,” said Van Jones. “When you have prominent people like Kim helping voiceless people behind bars — like Chris Young who she is advocating for today — that’s incredibly powerful.”

 

       Kardashian West on Tuesday told “Wrongful Conviction” podcast host Jason Flom that she’s advocating for Young, who was sentenced to life without parole after being arrested for marijuana and cocaine possession.

 

       “It’s so unfair. He’s 30 years old. He’s been in for almost 10 years,” she said.

 

       Kardashian West later tweeted an image from the meeting, writing “It started with Ms. Alice, but looking at her and seeing the faces and learning the stories of the men and women I’ve met inside prisons I knew I couldn’t stop at just one. It’s time for REAL systemic change”

 

       Young was one of 32 people charged by federal prosecutors in a drug trafficking investigation. Prosecutors say he was buying cocaine or crack from a major drug supplier at a gas station in December 2010. He was convicted in 2013 on drug charges and also pleaded guilty to being a felon with a gun.

 

      Young, who was 26 at the time, received a life sentence in August 2014 from then-U.S. District Judge Kevin Sharp, who has since left the bench and has very publicly opposed the mandatory minimum sentencing he had to hand down.

 

       “What I was required to do that day was cruel and did not make us safer,” Sharp tweeted in June.

 

       Young previously had been arrested at both 18 and 19 on both felony and misdemeanor drug possessions charges. For those two arrests combined, he had been slated to serve 14 years through community corrections.

 

       Kushner has added prison reform to his broad portfolio, though others in the administration — namely Attorney General Jeff Sessions — support the toughest possible sentences for drug and other convictions. The president’s son-in-law has had an interest in prison reform since his own father, Charles Kushner, was incarcerated for 14 months after being convicted of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering.

 

       TMZ first reported Kardashian West’s White House visit Wednesday.
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Kenyan artist Michael Soi is criticizing China’s relationship with Africa through his collection of paintings at Nairobi’s Circle Art Gallery that depict the interest that China is showing in Africa. The 74-piece collection underscores China’s heavy involvement in the continent by depicting Africa as a woman being lured by China.
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