Whether it’s haggling for a better price or negotiating for a higher salary, there is a skill to getting the most of what you want. Researchers at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies are conducting research on how a virtual negotiator may be able to teach you the art of making a good deal. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.
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An Egyptian court has sentenced the deputy governor of the country’s second-largest city to 12 years in prison on corruption charges.
The Cairo criminal court also sentenced Souad el-Kholy, deputy governor of the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, to a one-year suspended sentence for bribery, profiteering and squandering public funds on Wednesday. The court acquitted five local businessmen in the same case.
El-Kholy can appeal the verdict against her.
She became Alexandria’s deputy governor in 2015 and was arrested two years later, in October 2017, in a case linked to illegal seizures of state land, illegal construction and building violations. She is the most senior female official to be arrested on corruption charges.
Alexandria is notorious for illegal construction and demolition of historical buildings to make way for high-rise apartment towers.
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Nissan’s former chairman Carlos Ghosn, in his first interview since his arrest in November, blamed fellow executives opposed to forging closer ties with the automaker’s French alliance partner Renault for scheming against him, the Japanese newspaper Nikkei reported Wednesday.
The financial daily said it spoke with Ghosn for 20 minutes earlier in the day at the Tokyo Detention Center, where the 64-year-old star executive has been held since Nov. 19.
Earlier, Ghosn only was allowed visits by his lawyers and embassy officials.
Prosecutors have charged Ghosn with falsifying financial reports in under-reporting his compensation. He has also been indicted on charges of breach of trust related to his handling of investment losses and to payments made to a Saudi businessman.
In the interview, Ghosn reiterated that he is innocent and said others in the company schemed to force him out with a “plot and treason.”
“People translated strong leadership to (mean) dictator, to distort reality,” he told the Nikkei. It was for the “purpose of getting rid of me,” he was quoted as saying.
Nissan Motor Co. defended itself, saying prosecutors took action following an internal investigation set off by whistleblowers in the company.
“The sole cause of this chain of events is the misconduct led by Ghosn and Kelly,” company spokesman Nicholas Maxfield said. He was referring to Greg Kelly, another executive who has been charged with collaborating with Ghosn in underreporting his compensation. Kelly was released on bail last month and remains in Tokyo.
French government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux declined to comment when asked about Ghosn’s interview.
Authorities have rejected Ghosn’s requests for bail, saying he might tamper with evidence or possibly flee.
Ghosn told the Nikkei he had no intention of fleeing and wants to defend himself in court. But he questioned why he could not gain release on bail.
“I don’t understand why I am still being detained,” he was quoted as saying, adding he could not tamper with evidence because “All the evidence is with Nissan.”
The newspaper said Ghosn did not appear tired or flustered and when asked about his health, he said he was “doing fine.”
“In life there are ups and downs,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.
Renault SA owns 43 percent of Nissan. It sent Ghosn to Japan in 1999 to help lead the Japanese automaker’s turnaround from near bankruptcy. Ghosn said he had discussed a “plan to integrate” Nissan with Renault and their smaller alliance partner Mitsubishi Motors Corp. with Nissan’s CEO, Hiroto Saikawa, in September.
The plan was to bring Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi Motors closer together and ensure they had “autonomy under one holding company,” he told the newspaper.
Nissan dismissed Ghosn as chairman shortly after his arrest. He was also dismissed as chairman of Mitsubishi. Earlier this month, he resigned as chairman and CEO of Renault and was replaced by Jean-Donimique Senard, the former chairman of Michelin.
Ghosn refuted various allegations against him, saying most of the alleged violations were approved by Nissan’s legal department or other senior executives.
He also denied any wrongdoing in buying expensive homes in Brazil and Lebanon, saying he needed a safe place to work and meet with people. The homes were no secret and if they had been a problem, he should have been consulted, Ghosn said.
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When the 1958 film adaptation of “The Old Man and the Sea” hit theaters, Ernest Hemingway happened to be in New York City to watch the World Series and invited his close friend A.E. Hotchner to go see the movie with him.
“About 12 or 13 minutes after we sat down, he turns to me and says, ‘Ready to go?”’ Hotchner said in a recent interview at his Connecticut home. The 101-year-old author and playwright recalls them walking out and taking off down the sidewalk, Hemingway ranting the whole time that the star Spencer Tracy was totally miscast, that he looked like a fat, rich actor trying to play a fisherman.
“He said, ‘You know, you write a book that you really like and then they do something like that to it, and it’s like pissing in your father’s beer’,” Hotchner said. (Hemingway reserved this particular turn of phrase for a handful of hated adaptations of his work, he said.)
Later that night, sitting at Toots Shor’s restaurant – a hangout frequented by Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Gleason and Marilyn Monroe – Hemingway urged Hotchner to do his own adaptation someday. Hotchner said he promised he would try.
More than 60 years later, Hotchner has kept his word. His stage adaptation of “The Old Man and the Sea,” a brief novel published in 1952 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, premieres at the newly renovated Point Park University’s Pittsburgh Playhouse on Feb. 1.
“It wasn’t until I became an old man myself that I really got to a version that could transport itself beyond the book,” he said.
Hotchner should be the perfect candidate to take the novel to the stage: he fished with Hemingway in Cuba, went to bullfights with him in Spain, hunted with him in Idaho and wrote the 1966 best-selling biography “Papa Hemingway.”
He also helped edit Hemingway’s bullfighting classic “The Dangerous Summer.” He often served as his agent and adapted several stories for television, including “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” “The Killers” and “The Battler,” which led to his first meeting with Paul Newman. (The two became best friends and neighbors and started the “Newman’s Own” food company together. But that’s another story).
“Somehow that pledge to him haunted me, because he died not too long after that. For years I would think about “The Old Man and The Sea.” But I never could think in my head how you could take this very personal book, because the old man is really Hemingway himself, which is really a literary work,” he said. “How do you bring that to life on the stage?”
He tried maybe 10 times over the years to adapt it, starting drafts only to scrap them, until his latest effort.
To help reel the project in, he enlisted his son Tim Hotchner to collaborate on it and help transform his draft into what will run in Pittsburgh through Feb. 17.
“I’ve lived with Hemingway’s ghost for my whole life and there was something very profound about this story, even though it’s very simple,” said Tim Hotchner, 47, a documentary filmmaker and writer. “And to have a 101-year-old father who’s still going out for his marlin, and hopefully coming back with better results, there are a lot of themes that really resonate.”
Tim Hotchner also saw the project as a way to re-examine the work with a modern lens: to look at what it means to be a man in the world and to look at the environment.
To make “The Old Man and the Sea” accessible on stage, the Hotchners crafted a kaleidoscope of the tale, and mined the text for a new approach. The boy has a bigger role, and Hemingway himself is a character, as is a cellist who evokes the moods of the play throughout.
It stars Tony Award-winning actor Anthony Crivello as Santiago, the aging fisherman, David Cabot as Hemingway and Gabriel Florentino as the boy, Manolin. Cellist Simon Cummings will perform original music for the show. The play is being directed by Ronald Allan-Lindblom.
Getting the draft to the stage happened unusually fast, as a result of a collaboration with New York City-based RWS Entertainment Group.
The Hotchners’ agent passed along the script to Joe Christopher, who heads up RWS’s theatrical division, who took it with him on vacation in June.
“I don’t know if it was because I literally read it while I was lying on the beach, but I could viscerally see the show working,” he said. He told RWS CEO Ryan Stana it would be the chance of a lifetime to work with someone who had been side-by-side with Hemingway.
The Pittsburgh Playhouse was looking for a new work to launch its first season in its renovated theater and Stana, an alumna of Point Park University, floated the idea to the school.
”In less than 24 hours, they were in,” he said.
The production is unique in that students at Point Park University are working on the show alongside professionals in all aspects from set design to ticket sales. It’s something Stana sees as a circular moment – youth helping bring to life the work of a centenarian playwright.
The entire show was put together in six months.
At 101, A.E. Hotchner is sharp, funny and surprisingly energetic. During a four-hour interview at his home, he needed only a 10-minute break to get a glass of water. Last year, his Depression-era detective novel “The Amazing Adventures of Aaron Broom” was published and he’s still writing daily. His routine: breakfast, write, lunch, write, nightly news, dinner, gin and tonic, and maybe a movie.
As for “The Old Man and the Sea,” he’s satisfied with having finally followed through on a half-century-old promise to his friend, and he’s pleased with how it turned out.
“This is going to be a version that Hemingway would never have walked out on,” he said.
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Apple hoped to offset slowing demand for iPhones by raising the prices of its most important product, but that strategy seems to have backfired after sales sagged during the holiday shopping season.
Results released Tuesday revealed the magnitude of the iPhone slump – a 15 percent drop in revenue from the previous year. That decline in Apple’s most profitable product caused Apple’s total earnings for the October-December quarter to dip slightly to $20 billion.
Now, CEO Tim Cook is grappling with his toughest challenge since replacing co-founder Steve Jobs 7 years ago. Even as he tries to boost iPhone sales, Cook also must prove that Apple can still thrive even if demand doesn’t rebound.
It figures to be an uphill battle, given Apple’s stock has lost one-third of its value in less than four months, erasing about $370 billion in shareholder wealth.
Cook rattled Wall Street in early January by disclosing the company had missed its own revenue projections for the first time in 15 years. The last time that happened, the iPod was just beginning to transform Apple.
”This is the defining moment for Cook,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives. “He has lost some credibility on Wall Street, so now he will have to do some hand-holding as the company enters this next chapter.”
The results for the October-December period were slightly above the expectations analysts lowered after Cook’s Jan. 2 warning. Besides the profit decline, Apple’s revenue fell 5 percent from the prior year to $84 billion.
It marked the first time in more than two years that Apple’s quarterly revenue has dropped from the past year. The erosion was caused by the decline of the iPhone, whose sales plunged to $52 billion, down by more than $9 billion from the previous year.
The past quarter’s letdown intensified the focus on Apple’s forecast for the opening three months of the year as investors try to get a better grasp on iPhone sales until the next models are released in autumn.
Apple predicted its revenue for the January-March period will range from $55 billion to $59 billion. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had been anticipating revenue of about $59 billion.
Investors liked what they read and heard, helping Apple’s stock recoup some of their recent losses. The stock gained nearly 6 percent to $163.50 in extended trading after the report came out.
“We wouldn’t change our position with anyone’s,” Cook reassured analysts during a conference call reviewing the past quarter and the upcoming months.
The company didn’t forecast how many iPhones it will sell, something Apple has done since the product first hit the market in 2007 and transformed society, as well as technology.
Apple is no longer disclosing how many iPhones it shipped after the quarter is completed, a change that Cook announced in November. That unexpected move raised suspicions that Apple was trying to conceal a forthcoming slump in iPhone sales – fears that were realized during the holiday season.
Cook traces most of Apple’s iPhone problems to a weakening economy in China, the company’s second biggest market behind the U.S. The company is also facing tougher competition in China, where homegrown companies such as Huawei and Xiaomi have been winning over consumers in that country with smartphones that have many of the same features as iPhones at lower prices.
Although a trade war started by President Donald Trump last year has hurt China and potentially caused some consumers there to boycott U.S. products, many analysts believe the iPhone’s malaise stems from other issues too.
Among them are higher prices – Apple’s most expensive iPhone now costs $1,350 – for models that aren’t that much better than the previous generation, giving consumers little incentive to stop using the device they already own until it wears out. Apple also gave old iPhones new life last by offering to replace aging batteries for $29, a 70 percent discount.
”The upgrade cycle has extended, there is no doubt about that,” Cook conceded.
Apple is banking that investors will realize the company can still reap huge profits by selling various services on the 1.4 billion devices running on its software.
That’s one reason why Cook has been touting the robust growth of Apple’s division that collects commissions from paid apps, processes payments, and sells hardware warranty plans and music streaming subscriptions. Apple Music now has more than 50 million subscribers, second to Spotify’s 87 million streaming subscribers through September.
Apple is also preparing to launch a video streaming service to compete against Netflix, though Cook said he wasn’t ready to provide details Tuesday.
The company’s services revenue in the past quarter climbed 19 percent from the prior year to $10.9 billion – more than any other category besides the iPhone.
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If Twitter is the town square for journalists, some are ready to step away.
That’s happening this week at the online news site Insider — by order of the boss. Reporters have been told to take a week off from tweeting at work and to keep TweetDeck off their computer screens. The idea of disengaging is to kick away a crutch for the journalists and escape from the echo chamber, said Julie Zeveloff West, Insider’s editor-in-chief for the U.S.
Addiction to always-rolling Twitter feeds and the temptation to join in has led to soul-searching in newsrooms. Some of it is inspired by the reaction to the Jan. 19 demonstration in Washington involving students from a Covington, Kentucky, high school, which gained traction as a story primarily because of social media outrage only to become more complicated as different details and perspectives emerged.
Planning for Insider’s ban predated the Covington story, West said.
She often walks through her newsrooms to find reporters staring at TweetDeck. Her goal is to encourage reporters to find news in other ways, by picking up the telephone or meeting sources. An editor will make sure no news is being missed.
Twitter “isn’t the place where most people find us,” she said. “Reporters place this outsized importance on it.”
The Washington Post’s David Von Drehle called Twitter the “crystal meth of newsrooms.” He dates his moment of disillusionment to the Republican national convention in 2012. In the section reserved for reporters, he noticed many watching TweetDeck feeds instead of listening to speeches from the podium or stepping away to talk to delegates.
“Twitter offers an endless stream of faux events,” Von Drehle wrote in a column this past weekend. “Fleeting sensations, momentary outrages, ersatz insights and provocative distortions. ‘News’ nuggets roll by like the chocolates on Lucy’s conveyer belt.”
Since Twitter is irresistible to journalists who have the smart-aleck gene — probably the majority — a newsroom quip or instant observation is now writ large.
Knee-jerk reactions
The Covington story uniquely played to Twitter’s faults. Early video that depicted Covington student Nick Sandmann staring down Native American activist Nathan Phillips spread rapidly across social media and many people rushed to offer their takes. An event that may have otherwise gone unnoticed instantly became a story by virtue of its existence online.
Yet when a wider picture emerged of what happened, in some respects quite literally from the view of a wider camera lens, a story that seemed black and white became gray. Some of the early opinions became embarrassing and were quietly deleted. But since there’s no such thing as a quiet deletion when people are watching online, the incident became fodder for another outbreak of partisan warfare.
The episode led Farhad Manjoo, a columnist for The New York Times, to declare Twitter “the world’s most damaging social network.”
In a column, he said he plans to stifle the urge to quickly type his opinion on every news event and suggested others follow his lead. Between mistakes and overly provocative opinions, too much can go wrong for journalists on Twitter, he said in an interview.
“In order to be good on Twitter, you have to be authentic,” he said. “But authenticity is also dangerous. It leads people to make assumptions about you. It can go bad in different ways.”
‘Overboard on Twitter’
Perhaps it’s inevitable at a time that Twitter needs to be constantly monitored because it is one of the president of the United States’ favorite forms of communications, but Manjoo said too often reporters spend more time in the virtual world than the real one.
“The way the media works now, we’ve just gone overboard on Twitter,” he said.
Days after Covington, some news outlets proved his point by writing stories about NBC Today show host Savannah Guthrie’s interview with Sandmann that were nothing but collections of Twitter comments about how she did. Some tweeters thought Guthrie was too hard on him. Some thought she was too soft. Simply by nature of the forum, few who thought it was just right bothered posting.
Media experts wary of Twitter quitters said a distinction between the platform and how people use it should not be lost.
“I really don’t think it’s so hard to avoid commenting on a moving story when the facts are not clear,” said Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism professor.
Leaving Twitter means cutting off a valuable news source since many newsmakers use the venue to make announcements, he said. It’s also an equalizer in giving access to a virtual town square to people who might otherwise be overlooked, said news consultant Jeff Jarvis.
“Journalists should be looking for every possible means to listen better to the public,” Jarvis said. “If you cut yourself off, it’s ridiculous.”
New approach
Some have done that, or tried. Manjoo’s colleague at the Times, White House correspondent Maggie Haberman, wrote last July about how she was stepping back from Twitter after nearly nine years and 187,000 tweets.
“The viciousness, toxic partisan anger, intellectual dishonesty, motive-questioning and sexism are at all-time highs, with no end in sight,” she wrote. “It is a place where people who are unquestionably upset about any number of things go to feed their anger, where the underbelly of free speech is at its most bilious. Twitter is now an anger video game for many users.”
Haberman predicted she would eventually re-engage with Twitter but in a different way. She’s back; she tweeted five times and retweeted links six times by 10 a.m. Tuesday. She’s up to 194,000 tweets and has a following of more than a million people. She declined a request for an interview about how the experience changed her.
Kelly Evans was an early Twitter user at The Wall Street Journal and then at CNBC, where she’s a news anchor. She found it a valuable place to get ideas, and to connect with readers, viewers and fellow journalists.
But she realized in the summer of 2016 that it was taking up too much of her personal time with little contribution to her professional life. She publicly signed off and has kept to her pledge for the most part. She says now she doesn’t regret it.
Evans admits she may have missed some story tips, but questions the reliability of much that is on Twitter.
“I feel more healthy and I feel like I’m able to do my job better,” she said.
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Actor John Malkovich will take the starring role in a new play by Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet about a disgraced Hollywood studio head, a story he said was written partly in reaction to the scandal engulfing film producer Harvey Weinstein.
Speaking to BBC Radio on Tuesday, Malkovich described “Bitter Wheat,” which opens in London in the summer, as “a black farce about a very badly behaved movie mogul,” who he said was “not particularly” Weinstein. The producer will go on trial in New York in May on charges of sexually assaulting two women.
“It’s a great deal about that business and a great deal about how people in that business, in positions say as studio heads have behaved really for more or less a century now. So many of them were so notoriously badly behaved,” he said.
“The idea…maybe started as reaction to all the news that came out last year, in particular about Harvey Weinstein but actually about many many people, some of whom were also higher ups in various studios. I think David kind of took the idea from there and went with it.”
More than 70 women, mainly young actresses and others working in film, have accused Weinstein, 66, of sexual misconduct, including assault, dating back decades.
Weinstein, who pleaded not guilty after his arrest last May, has denied all the accusations, saying any sexual encounters were consensual.
The scandal helped kick off the #MeToo movement, in which dozens of powerful men in Hollywood and beyond have been accused of sexual misconduct.
“Of course it might upset people who’ve experienced the kind of treatment that the play contains and shows and describes and that we watch but what can I do about that?” Malkovich said.
“I am sure a lot of people will laugh and a lot of people will be upset and a lot of people may not like it. Personally I think it’s a terrific piece of writing.”
Malkovich, most recently seen on screens in Netflix thriller “Bird Box” and on British television as legendary detective Hercule Poirot in “The ABC Murders”, said he met Weinstein when making 1998 drama “Rounders” but “didn’t really have any connection with him”.
In “Bitter Wheat”, the 65-year-old actor will play Barney Fein, described in a press release as “a bloated monster- a studio head, who, like his predecessor, the minotaur, devours the young he has lured to his cave.
“His fall from power to shame is a mythic journey which has been compared to ‘The Odyssey’ by people who claim to have read that book.”
Mamet, known for plays such as “Sexual Perversity in Chicago” and “Glengarry Glen Ross,” has written about sexual misconduct before, namely in “Oleanna” about a female student and her professor.
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Senior U.S. officials and experts say the United States needs to rally allies to pressure China stealing advanced technology through cyber espionage. At the same time, key American lawmakers are questioning the readiness and capacity of the U.S. to counter such threats.
The renewed push comes after U.S. federal prosecutors pressed criminal charges against the world’s largest telecommunications company — China’s Huawei Technologies — its chief financial officer and several subsidiaries for alleged financial fraud and theft of U.S. intellectual property.
Huawei denies the charges. Beijing denies its government and military engage in cyber-espionage, saying the U.S. allegations are fabricated.
“The Huawei incident seems like an action against an individual corporation, but it is actually bigger than this,” said Hu Xingdou, a Beijing-based scholar. “This is about one state’s technology war against another state, about which one will occupy the technology high ground in the future.”
The Trump administration, however, said Washington is deeply concerned about the potential of Beijing using Chinese technology firms to spy on the U.S. and its allies.
“China’s pursuit of intellectual property, sensitive research and development plans, and the U.S. person data remains a significant threat to the United States government and the private sector,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told lawmakers at a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on Tuesday.
Other officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Non-proliferation Christopher Ford, advocate for a global coalition against Chinese technology-transfer threats.
At another hearing, experts said threats that Huawei poses to supply chains and critical infrastructure are “absolutely real.”
“We need defensive measures and we need to invest in our own technologies as well, and we need to be cooperating with allies and partners,” said Ely Ratner, who was deputy national security advisor to former Vice President Joe Biden.
“We know that the Huawei leadership has members of the Communist Party within it, and the company has a long and deep relationship with both PLA and the Ministry of State Security in China. And of course is subject to Chinese law and their new National Intelligence law which gives the government the right to use the networks and data as they wish,” added Ratner at a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing.
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby warned that China may gain “economic, informational, and blackmail” leverage over other countries through data collected by companies such as Huawei.
“This dissolves or corrodes the resolve in these countries potentially to stand up to Chinese potential coercion,” Colby told senators.
“We need to be able to form a network that is sufficient and cohesive to stand up to these Chinese threats,” he added.
Bipartisan senators have been pushing for the creation of a White House office to fight China’s state-sponsored technology theft and defend critical supply chains.
“China and other nations are currently attempting to achieve technological and economic superiority over the United States through the aggressive use of state-directed or state-supported technology transfers,” said Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) who introduced a bill to fight China’s technology threats earlier this month.
“A national response to combat these threats and ensure our national security has, to date, been hampered by insufficient coordination at the federal level,” added Warner and Rubio in a statement.
Under the bill, the Office of Critical Technologies & Security would coordinate with federal and state regulators, the private sector, experts and U.S. allies to ensure that every available tool is being utilized to safeguard the supply chain and protect emerging dual-use technologies.
The case has provoked strong reactions in China.
Lew Mon-hung, a Hong Kong-based businessman and analyst, says China should fight back in U.S. courts.
Mon-hung, a former member of the Chinese Political Consultative Conference (China’s political advisory legislative body), says that China should trust the U.S.’s rule of law and resort to legal measures to clear Huawei’s name.
“When the US government filed these charges, China’s government, Huawei, or the Chinese public, should use legal means to solve legal problems,” he said. “Since Huawei has abundant financial resources, and since the Chinese government has the largest foreign currency reserve in the world, why don’t they just hire the best American lawyers? They can build a strong team of lawyers against this case and fight a legal battle.”
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Pakistan’s government has proposed to eliminate taxes associated with manufacturing of solar and wind energy equipment in the country, in an effort to boost the production and use of renewable power and overcome power shortages.
A new government budget bill, expected to be approved in parliament within a month, would give renewable energy manufacturers and assemblers in the country a five-year exemption from the taxes.
“Pakistan is paying the heavy cost of an ongoing energy crisis prevailing for the last many years,” Finance Minister Asad Umar said last week in a budget speech. “In this difficult time, the promotion of renewable energy resources like wind and solar has become indispensable.”
Only about 5 to 6 percent of the power to Pakistan’s national electrical grid currently comes from renewable energy, according to the country’s Alternate Energy Development Board (AEDB).
The proposed tax reduction should boost that by encouraging greater local manufacturing of equipment needed for renewable power expansion, said Asad Mahmood, a renewable energy expert with the National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, which sits within the Ministry of Energy.
Remaining hurdles
But manufacturers said the tax breaks likely would not be sufficient to spur expansion of local renewable energy industries.
Naeem Siddiqui, the chairman of Ebox Systems, which assembles solar panels in Islamabad, said the new tax breaks were good news but Pakistani manufacturers would still struggle to compete with tax-free, low-priced imports of foreign-built solar panels and other renewable energy equipment.
“The government has already waived off taxes and duties on the import of renewable energy products, and local manufacturers cannot compete with the low-priced imported items,” he said.
Pakistan today imports more than 95 percent of the solar panels and other renewable energy systems it uses, largely from China, said Aamir Hussain, chief executive officer of Tesla PV, one of the largest manufacturers of solar energy products in Pakistan.
“As long as the government will not impose duties on the import of finished products, the local market cannot grow,” he said.
Pakistani manufacturers also might need government help in pushing sales of new Pakistani clean energy products abroad, in order to build bigger markets and lower manufacturing costs, Siddiqui said.
Mahmood, of the energy ministry, said he believed the government would also move to cut existing duties on the import of components used in manufacturing finished renewable energy products, in order to help Pakistani manufacturers.
Taxes on those components have pushed up prices of Pakistani-made renewable energy systems, making them harder to sell and leading several companies to the brink of failure, he said.
Certification system
Local manufacturers should work with the government to determine which components should be manufactured locally and which imported to ensure costs of locally made wind and solar systems are competitive, he said.
Muhammad Abdur Rahman, managing director of Innosol, a company that imports and installs renewable energy systems, said that cheap imports of renewable energy systems from China remain the main barrier to building more such systems in Pakistan.
“The local industry is facing pricing issues because of low-quality solar energy appliances being imported in the country that are very cheap as compared to the local market,” he said.
That might be resolved in part by the government starting a certification system for renewable energy products to grade them according to quality, he said.
Amjad Ali Awan, chief executive officer of the Alternate Energy Development Board, said the aim of the new policies was for renewable energy to supply 28 to 30 percent of the country’s national electrical grid by 2030.
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Pakistan’s government has proposed to eliminate taxes associated with manufacturing of solar and wind energy equipment in the country, in an effort to boost the production and use of renewable power and overcome power shortages.
A new government budget bill, expected to be approved in parliament within a month, would give renewable energy manufacturers and assemblers in the country a five-year exemption from the taxes.
“Pakistan is paying the heavy cost of an ongoing energy crisis prevailing for the last many years,” Finance Minister Asad Umar said last week in a budget speech. “In this difficult time, the promotion of renewable energy resources like wind and solar has become indispensable.”
Only about 5 to 6 percent of the power to Pakistan’s national electrical grid currently comes from renewable energy, according to the country’s Alternate Energy Development Board (AEDB).
The proposed tax reduction should boost that by encouraging greater local manufacturing of equipment needed for renewable power expansion, said Asad Mahmood, a renewable energy expert with the National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, which sits within the Ministry of Energy.
Remaining hurdles
But manufacturers said the tax breaks likely would not be sufficient to spur expansion of local renewable energy industries.
Naeem Siddiqui, the chairman of Ebox Systems, which assembles solar panels in Islamabad, said the new tax breaks were good news but Pakistani manufacturers would still struggle to compete with tax-free, low-priced imports of foreign-built solar panels and other renewable energy equipment.
“The government has already waived off taxes and duties on the import of renewable energy products, and local manufacturers cannot compete with the low-priced imported items,” he said.
Pakistan today imports more than 95 percent of the solar panels and other renewable energy systems it uses, largely from China, said Aamir Hussain, chief executive officer of Tesla PV, one of the largest manufacturers of solar energy products in Pakistan.
“As long as the government will not impose duties on the import of finished products, the local market cannot grow,” he said.
Pakistani manufacturers also might need government help in pushing sales of new Pakistani clean energy products abroad, in order to build bigger markets and lower manufacturing costs, Siddiqui said.
Mahmood, of the energy ministry, said he believed the government would also move to cut existing duties on the import of components used in manufacturing finished renewable energy products, in order to help Pakistani manufacturers.
Taxes on those components have pushed up prices of Pakistani-made renewable energy systems, making them harder to sell and leading several companies to the brink of failure, he said.
Certification system
Local manufacturers should work with the government to determine which components should be manufactured locally and which imported to ensure costs of locally made wind and solar systems are competitive, he said.
Muhammad Abdur Rahman, managing director of Innosol, a company that imports and installs renewable energy systems, said that cheap imports of renewable energy systems from China remain the main barrier to building more such systems in Pakistan.
“The local industry is facing pricing issues because of low-quality solar energy appliances being imported in the country that are very cheap as compared to the local market,” he said.
That might be resolved in part by the government starting a certification system for renewable energy products to grade them according to quality, he said.
Amjad Ali Awan, chief executive officer of the Alternate Energy Development Board, said the aim of the new policies was for renewable energy to supply 28 to 30 percent of the country’s national electrical grid by 2030.
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Faced with potentially ruinous lawsuits over California’s recent wildfires, Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection Tuesday in a move that could lead to higher bills for customers of the nation’s biggest utility and reduce the size of any payouts to fire victims.
The Chapter 11 filing allows PG&E to continue operating while it puts its books in order. But it was seen as a possible glimpse of the financial toll that could lie ahead because of global warming, which scientists say is leading to fiercer, more destructive blazes and longer fire seasons.
The bankruptcy could also jeopardize California’s ambitious program to switch entirely to renewable energy sources.
PG&E said the bankruptcy filing will not affect electricity or gas service and will allow for an “orderly, fair and expeditious resolution” of wildfire claims.
“Throughout this process, we are fully committed to enhancing our wildfire safety efforts, as well as helping restoration and rebuilding efforts across the communities impacted by the devastating Northern California wildfires,” interim CEO John R. Simon said in a statement.
PG&E cited hundreds of lawsuits from victims of fires in 2017 and 2018 and tens of billions of dollars in potential liabilities when it announced earlier this month that it planned to file for bankruptcy.
The blazes include the nation’s deadliest wildfire in a century — the one in November that killed at least 86 people and destroyed 15,000 homes in Paradise and surrounding communities. The cause is under investigation, but suspicion fell on PG&E after it reported power line problems nearby around the time the fire broke out.
Last week, however, state investigators determined that the company’s equipment was not to blame for a 2017 fire that killed 22 people in Northern California wine country.
The wildfire lawsuits accuse PG&E of inadequate maintenance, including not adequately trimming trees and clearing brush around electrical lines, and failing to shut off power when the fire risk is high.
The bankruptcy filing immediately puts the lawsuits on hold and consolidates them in bankruptcy court, where legal experts say victims will probably receive less money.
“They’re going to have to take some sort of haircut on their claims,” said Jared Ellias, a bankruptcy attorney who teaches at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. “We don’t know yet what that will be.”
In a bankruptcy proceeding, the victims have little chance of getting punitive damages or taking their claims to a jury. They will also have to stand in line behind PG&E’s secured creditors, such as banks, when a judge decides who gets paid and how much.
But legal experts also noted that state officials will be involved in the bankruptcy, and that could soften the blow to wildfire victims.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement that his administration will work to ensure that “Californians have access to safe, reliable and affordable service, that victims and employees are treated fairly, and that California continues to make forward progress on our climate change goals.”
Legal experts said the bankruptcy will probably take years to resolve and result in higher rates for customers of PG&E, which provides natural gas and electricity to 16 million people in Northern and central California.
PG&E would not speculate about the effect on customers’ bills, noting that the state Public Utilities Commission sets rates.
PG&E also filed for bankruptcy in 2001 during an electricity crisis marked by rolling blackouts and the manipulation of the energy market. It emerged from bankruptcy three years later but obtained billions in higher payments from ratepayers.
California has set a goal of getting 100 percent of its electricity from carbon-free sources such as wind, solar and hydropower by 2045. To achieve that, utilities must switch to buying power from renewable sources.
PG&E made agreements in 2017 to buy electricity from solar farms. But because of its bankruptcy, some experts have questioned its ability to pay what it agreed to, or to make the investments in grid upgrades and batteries necessary to bring more renewable energy online.
“PG&E’s bankruptcy is going to make it a lot more costly for California to meet its environmental goals, and could make it more challenging just to get the infrastructure built to help cut emissions and increase renewable energy,” said Travis Miller, an investment strategist at Morningstar Inc.
Consumer activist Erin Brockovich, who took on PG&E in the 1990s, had urged California lawmakers not to let the utility go into bankruptcy because it could mean less money for wildfire victims.
PG&E faced additional pressure not to seek bankruptcy after investigators said a private electrical system, not utility equipment, caused the 2017 wine country blaze that destroyed more than 5,600 buildings in Sonoma and Napa counties. The governor’s office estimated that more than half of the roughly $30 billion in potential wildfire damages that PG&E said it was facing came from that fire.
While the investigators’ finding reduced PG&E’s potential liability, it did little to reassure investors. Its stock is down 70 percent from about a year ago.
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Faced with potentially ruinous lawsuits over California’s recent wildfires, Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection Tuesday in a move that could lead to higher bills for customers of the nation’s biggest utility and reduce the size of any payouts to fire victims.
The Chapter 11 filing allows PG&E to continue operating while it puts its books in order. But it was seen as a possible glimpse of the financial toll that could lie ahead because of global warming, which scientists say is leading to fiercer, more destructive blazes and longer fire seasons.
The bankruptcy could also jeopardize California’s ambitious program to switch entirely to renewable energy sources.
PG&E said the bankruptcy filing will not affect electricity or gas service and will allow for an “orderly, fair and expeditious resolution” of wildfire claims.
“Throughout this process, we are fully committed to enhancing our wildfire safety efforts, as well as helping restoration and rebuilding efforts across the communities impacted by the devastating Northern California wildfires,” interim CEO John R. Simon said in a statement.
PG&E cited hundreds of lawsuits from victims of fires in 2017 and 2018 and tens of billions of dollars in potential liabilities when it announced earlier this month that it planned to file for bankruptcy.
The blazes include the nation’s deadliest wildfire in a century — the one in November that killed at least 86 people and destroyed 15,000 homes in Paradise and surrounding communities. The cause is under investigation, but suspicion fell on PG&E after it reported power line problems nearby around the time the fire broke out.
Last week, however, state investigators determined that the company’s equipment was not to blame for a 2017 fire that killed 22 people in Northern California wine country.
The wildfire lawsuits accuse PG&E of inadequate maintenance, including not adequately trimming trees and clearing brush around electrical lines, and failing to shut off power when the fire risk is high.
The bankruptcy filing immediately puts the lawsuits on hold and consolidates them in bankruptcy court, where legal experts say victims will probably receive less money.
“They’re going to have to take some sort of haircut on their claims,” said Jared Ellias, a bankruptcy attorney who teaches at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. “We don’t know yet what that will be.”
In a bankruptcy proceeding, the victims have little chance of getting punitive damages or taking their claims to a jury. They will also have to stand in line behind PG&E’s secured creditors, such as banks, when a judge decides who gets paid and how much.
But legal experts also noted that state officials will be involved in the bankruptcy, and that could soften the blow to wildfire victims.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement that his administration will work to ensure that “Californians have access to safe, reliable and affordable service, that victims and employees are treated fairly, and that California continues to make forward progress on our climate change goals.”
Legal experts said the bankruptcy will probably take years to resolve and result in higher rates for customers of PG&E, which provides natural gas and electricity to 16 million people in Northern and central California.
PG&E would not speculate about the effect on customers’ bills, noting that the state Public Utilities Commission sets rates.
PG&E also filed for bankruptcy in 2001 during an electricity crisis marked by rolling blackouts and the manipulation of the energy market. It emerged from bankruptcy three years later but obtained billions in higher payments from ratepayers.
California has set a goal of getting 100 percent of its electricity from carbon-free sources such as wind, solar and hydropower by 2045. To achieve that, utilities must switch to buying power from renewable sources.
PG&E made agreements in 2017 to buy electricity from solar farms. But because of its bankruptcy, some experts have questioned its ability to pay what it agreed to, or to make the investments in grid upgrades and batteries necessary to bring more renewable energy online.
“PG&E’s bankruptcy is going to make it a lot more costly for California to meet its environmental goals, and could make it more challenging just to get the infrastructure built to help cut emissions and increase renewable energy,” said Travis Miller, an investment strategist at Morningstar Inc.
Consumer activist Erin Brockovich, who took on PG&E in the 1990s, had urged California lawmakers not to let the utility go into bankruptcy because it could mean less money for wildfire victims.
PG&E faced additional pressure not to seek bankruptcy after investigators said a private electrical system, not utility equipment, caused the 2017 wine country blaze that destroyed more than 5,600 buildings in Sonoma and Napa counties. The governor’s office estimated that more than half of the roughly $30 billion in potential wildfire damages that PG&E said it was facing came from that fire.
While the investigators’ finding reduced PG&E’s potential liability, it did little to reassure investors. Its stock is down 70 percent from about a year ago.
…
Ireland has alerted the European Commission that it will seek emergency aid in the event of a no-deal Brexit and is considering a range of other ways to help firms cope, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Tuesday.
With close trading links with Britain, Ireland’s export-focused economy is considered the most vulnerable among the remaining 27 European Union members to the impact of its nearest neighbor’s departure from the bloc.
Ireland’s finance department forecast earlier on Tuesday that economic growth could be 4.25 percentage points less than forecast by 2023 in a disorderly Brexit and would disproportionately hit agricultural goods and small- and medium-sized enterprises.
Varadkar said last month that Dublin was discussing with the Commission what state aid might be available if Britain leaves the bloc without a deal, and confirmed on Tuesday that it had informed Brussels that such a request would be forthcoming.
“The purpose of this aid would be to help cope with the impact on Irish trade, particularly for the beef, dairy and fishing sectors,” Varadkar said in the text of a speech to be delivered at the Irish Farmers’ Association’s annual general meeting.
Additional exceptional EU supports available in the case of serious agricultural market disturbance that Baltic states used when the Russian market was closed to them “can be used for us too,” Varadkar added.
He said the government has been engaging on these issues with EU Agriculture Commissioner, Phil Hogan, a former Irish government minister and member of Varadkar’s Fine Gael party.
Farmers were told that domestic assistance would also likely be made available, with Varadkar saying his cabinet discussed providing funds for storage, restructuring grants and other state aids at its weekly meeting on Tuesday.
“I can assure you that Ireland is seeking every possible assistance,” he said.
…
Ireland has alerted the European Commission that it will seek emergency aid in the event of a no-deal Brexit and is considering a range of other ways to help firms cope, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Tuesday.
With close trading links with Britain, Ireland’s export-focused economy is considered the most vulnerable among the remaining 27 European Union members to the impact of its nearest neighbor’s departure from the bloc.
Ireland’s finance department forecast earlier on Tuesday that economic growth could be 4.25 percentage points less than forecast by 2023 in a disorderly Brexit and would disproportionately hit agricultural goods and small- and medium-sized enterprises.
Varadkar said last month that Dublin was discussing with the Commission what state aid might be available if Britain leaves the bloc without a deal, and confirmed on Tuesday that it had informed Brussels that such a request would be forthcoming.
“The purpose of this aid would be to help cope with the impact on Irish trade, particularly for the beef, dairy and fishing sectors,” Varadkar said in the text of a speech to be delivered at the Irish Farmers’ Association’s annual general meeting.
Additional exceptional EU supports available in the case of serious agricultural market disturbance that Baltic states used when the Russian market was closed to them “can be used for us too,” Varadkar added.
He said the government has been engaging on these issues with EU Agriculture Commissioner, Phil Hogan, a former Irish government minister and member of Varadkar’s Fine Gael party.
Farmers were told that domestic assistance would also likely be made available, with Varadkar saying his cabinet discussed providing funds for storage, restructuring grants and other state aids at its weekly meeting on Tuesday.
“I can assure you that Ireland is seeking every possible assistance,” he said.
…
In 1807, a wealthy 37-year-old scholar was captured in West Africa, in what is now Senegal, and transported to the United States to be sold into slavery.
That man, Omar Ibn Said, lived the remainder of his life enslaved in the American South, and his story might have been forgotten if not for the handwritten autobiography he left behind.
Written in Arabic and recently acquired by the Library of Congress, “The Life of Omar Ibn Said” is not only a rare handwritten personal story of an American slave, but it’s also one of the first intimate accounts of the early history of Muslims in the United States.
Ibn Said was among the approximately one-third of American slaves who were Muslim. While the exact number of enslaved Muslims is unknown, up to 40 percent of those who were captured and enslaved came from predominantly Muslim parts of West Africa.
“It challenges this notion of this being a Christian nation,” says Zaheer Ali, an oral historian at the Brooklyn Historical Society and project director of the Muslims in Brooklyn project. “It opens us up to understanding that there were non-Christians present at the founding of this nation, and not only at the founding of this nation, but that helped build this nation…It challenges the idea that this was a quote ‘Christian nation’ from the beginning.”
America’s first Muslims were slaves
The subsequent erasure of the black Muslim identity among the enslaved people in the United States was part of a strategy to strip enslaved Africans of their individual identities and reduce them to chattel both legally and in the public imagination.
“The black classification was devised to mark enslaved Africans as property. So, if you were black, you were no longer a human being,” says Khaled Beydoun, an author and law professor at the University of Arkansas. “If you acknowledge some of these religious identities, then you’re in turn acknowledging their humanity.”
During the antebellum period in the South, the Muslim identity took on very different identity from the stereotype of an African slave.
“When people thought of a Muslim at that time, they thought Arab, they thought Ottoman, they thought Middle Eastern,” Beydoun says. “Enslaved Africans did not fit within that racial ethnic caricature or form.”
This narrow understanding of both Muslims and Africans led to the widespread belief that the two identities could not overlap and helped hasten the erasure of Muslim African slaves from the historical record. In addition, the names of enslaved Muslims were often anglicized, which further obscured them from the history.
Writing themselves into history
Enslaved Muslims who left behind a written record challenged the idea that enslaved men and women were a brute workforce solely capable of physical labor because they lacked the intellectual capacity that would make them deserving of independence and freedom.
“These were people who were essentially writing themselves into existence both in terms of leaving a record of their life but also in terms of challenging the racist assumptions about people of African descent,” Ali says.
What we know about the masses of African Muslim slaves who left no written record can be garnered from the remembrances of their descendants and their names on bills of sale or runaway notices.
How long they adhered to Islam is unknown. Some converted to Christianity while others pretended to convert in order to satisfy their captors. But there are signs that some enslaved Muslims held onto the religion of their homelands.
Ali points to burial grounds on islands off the southern state of Georgia, where slave tombstones bear Islamic markings, and churches that were built facing the east, the direction Muslims face while praying. And there are descendants who recall seeing their elders using prayer rugs and Islamic prayer beads.
These recollections suggest that despite any coercion, some enslaved Muslims held onto their religious practices for life.
Leaving their mark
While the existence of a sizable number of African Muslim slaves might not be well known to most Americans, they are believed to have left their mark on American culture.
Author and scholar Sylviane Diouf has suggested that slave work songs are related to the vocal pattern of Koranic recitation and the call to prayer. Those work songs — such as “Levee Camp Holler” a century-old song that originated in Mississippi — eventually gave birth to the blues.
And Ali says it’s possible that the banjo and guitar came from a traditional West African instrument.
Perhaps the most lasting legacy of Muslim slaves is the modern movement among some African Americans to embrace what they believe to be the original religion of their people.
“The movement towards Islam in the African American community in the 20th century was in part understood by its adherents as a reclaiming of a lost heritage, that this was not a new religion,” Ali says. “Islam is not new to the United States; it was here before the country was founded; it was present among the people who helped build this country; and it has very much been a part of the thread of America’s story.”
Beginning with the period of American slavery until today, black Muslims continue to comprise the largest segment of the Muslim community in the United States.
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The U.S. has imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PdVSA, in an increased effort to pressure Nicolás Maduro to relinquish power to Juan Guaidó, now recognized by the U.S. and a number of other nations as the country’s legitimate president. VOA’s diplomatic correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.
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Brazil eyes management overhaul for Vale after dam disaster
Brazil’s government weighed pushing for a management overhaul at iron ore miner Vale SA on Monday as grief over the hundreds feared killed by a dam burst turned into anger, with prosecutors, politicians and victims’ families calling for punishment.
By Monday night, firefighters in the state of Minas Gerais had confirmed that 65 people were killed by Friday’s disaster, when a burst tailings dam sent a torrent of sludge into the miner’s offices and the town of Brumadinho.
There were still 279 people unaccounted for, and officials said it was unlikely that any would be found alive.
Brazil’s acting president, Hamilton Mourao, told reporters a government task force on the disaster response is looking at whether it could or should change Vale’s top management.
Public-sector pension funds hold several seats on the board of the mining company, and the government holds a “golden share” giving it power over strategic decisions.
“The question of Vale’s management is being studied by the crisis group,” said Mourao, who is serving as acting president for some 48 hours while President Jair Bolsonaro recovers from surgery. “I’m not sure if the group could make that recommendation.”
Shares of Vale, the world’s largest iron ore and nickel producer, plummeted 24.5 percent on Monday in Sao Paulo, erasing nearly $19 billion in market capitalization. A U.S. law firm filed a shareholder class action lawsuit against the company in New York, seeking to recover investment losses.
Igor Lima, a fund manager at Galt Capital in Rio, said the severe threats from the government and prosecutors drove the shares even lower than many analysts had estimated.
“This reaction has brought quite a lot of uncertainty about the size of the financial punishment Vale will have to handle,” he said.
Senator Renan Calheiros, who is in the thick of a Senate leadership race, on Twitter called for Vale’s top management to be removed urgently “out of respect for the victims … and to avoid any destruction of evidence.”
One of Vale’s lawyers, Sergio Bermudes, told newspaper Folha de S. Paulo that management should not leave the company and said that Calheiros was trying to profit politically from the tragedy.
Vale’s senior executives have apologized for the disaster but have not accepted responsibility, saying the installations met the highest industry standards.
Brazil’s top prosecutor, Raquel Dodge, said the company should be held strongly responsible and criminally prosecuted.
Executives could also be personally held responsible, she said.
Repeated Failures
The disaster at the Corrego do Feijao mine occurred less than four years after a dam collapsed at a nearby mine run by Samarco Mineracao SA, a joint venture by Vale and BHP Billiton, killing 19 and dumping toxic sludge in a major river.
While the 2015 Samarco disaster unleashed about five times more mining waste, Friday’s dam break was far deadlier as the wall of mud hit Vale’s local offices, including a crowded cafeteria, and tore through a populated area downhill.
“The cafeteria was in a risky area,” Renato Simao de Oliveiras, 32, said while searching for his twin brother, a Vale employee, at an emergency response station. “Just to save money, even if it meant losing the little guy. … These businessmen, they only think about themselves.”
As search efforts continued on Monday, firefighters laid down wood planks to cross a sea of sludge that is hundreds of meters wide in places, to reach a bus in search of bodies inside. Villagers discovered the bus as they tried to rescue a nearby cow stuck in the mud.
Longtime resident Ademir Rogerio cried as he surveyed the mud where Vale’s facilities once stood on the edge of town.
“The world is over for us,” he said. “Vale is the top mining company in the world. If this could happen here, imagine what would happen if it were a smaller miner.”
Nestor José de Mury said he lost his nephew and coworkers in the mud. “I’ve never seen anything like it, it killed everyone,” he said.
Vale Chief Financial Officer Luciano Siani told journalists on Monday evening that, despite interrupting operations in Brumadinho, the company would continue royalty payments to the municipality. He said Vale royalties made up about 60 percent of the town’s 140 million reais in revenue last year.
Siani said a donation of 100,000 reais will be made to each family that lost a relative in the disaster and said Vale would step up investments in dam safety.
Safety Debate
The board of Vale, which has raised its dividends over the last year, suspended all shareholder payouts and executive bonuses late on Sunday, as the disaster put its corporate strategy under scrutiny.
Since the disaster, courts have order a freeze on 11.8 billion reais of Vale’s assets to cover damages. State and federal authorities have slapped it with 349 million reais of administrative fines.
German insurer Allianz SE may have to cover some of the costs of the dam collapse, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
“I’m not a mining technician. I followed the technicians’ advice and you see what happened. It didn’t work,” Vale CEO Fabio Schvartsman said in a TV interview. “We are 100 percent within all the standards, and that didn’t do it.”
Many wondered if the state of Minas Gerais, named for the mining industry that has shaped its landscape for centuries, should have higher standards.
“There are safe ways of mining,” said Joao Vitor Xavier, head of the mining and energy commission in the state assembly. “It’s just that it diminishes profit margins, so they prefer to do things the cheaper way — and put lives at risk.”
Reaction to the disaster could threaten the plans of Brazil’s newly inaugurated president to relax restrictions on the mining industry, including proposals to open up indigenous reservations and large swaths of the Amazon jungle for mining.
Environment Minister Ricardo Salles said in a TV interview on Monday that Brazil should create new regulation for mining dams, replacing wet tailings dams with dry mining methods.
Mines and Energy Minister Bento Albuquerque proposed in a Sunday newspaper interview that the law be changed to assign responsibility in cases such as Brumadinho to the people responsible for certifying the safety of mining dams.
“Current law does not prevent disasters like the one we saw on Brumadinho,” he said. “The model for verifying the state of mining dams will have to be reconsidered. The model isn’t good.”
($1 = 3.7559 reais)
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Before Islamic State militants were dislodged from Iraq in 2017, they stole thousands of ancient artifacts. Most are still missing, and an international team of archaeologists is turning detective to recover as many as possible.
In 2014 and 2015, during its occupation of most of the country, the jihadist group raided and wrecked historical sites on what UNESCO called an “industrial” scale, using the loot to fund its operations through a smuggling network extending through the Middle East and beyond.
“We’re trying to recover a lot of artifacts and need all local and international resources to work. Iraq cannot do this on its own,” said Bruno Deslandes, a conservation architect at the U.N. cultural agency.
He spoke at a workshop at Baghdad’s National Museum convened to coordinate international retrieval efforts.
Video that went viral after it was released by Islamic State in 2014 showed militants using bulldozers and drills to tear down murals and statues the 3,000-year-old Assyrian site of Nimrud near Mosul. What they did not destroy they smuggled and traded.
Deslandes was the first international expert to access the site in early 2017 while Islamic State was still being driven out.
With the battle raging just kilometers away, he and his team had to work quickly to assess damage to the site, using 3D scanning and satellite imagery. Within minutes, they gathered a trove of data he says will be critical in tracking lost items down.
“When an artifact has been taken, we can document the footprint left,” Deslandes said.
“We document this very precisely… so we can recover it… When we have an artifact in Europe or somewhere matching this specification we can… yes!” he added, clapping his hands together for emphasis.
‘Tip of the Iceberg’
The workshop, which brought together Iraqi and foreign police, customs officials and archeological experts, was the second in two years organized by the European Union Advisory Mission in Iraq.
Law enforcement officials said they can help Iraqi police track down the objects using databases of seizures and other information, including smuggling routes.
Mariya Polner of the World Customs Organization (WCO) said reports of cultural heritage seizures by customs officials worldwide were “only the tip of the iceberg,” and that better coordination between the WCO’s 183 members states had helped increase recoveries.
In 2017, the WCO said customs officers recovered more than 14,000 items looted worldwide including antiquities, paintings and statues, 48 percent up from the previous year.
Eckhard Laufer, a participating police officer from Germany, said many private collectors and some museums often did not question the provenance of artifacts. “It is one of the biggest problems in crime.”
Deslandes said sites inside Iraq were still at risk. “When a site is liberated, it doesn’t mean the looting has finished.”
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Food shocks, or sudden losses of crops, livestock or fish, due to the combination extreme weather conditions and geopolitical events like war, increased from 1961 to 2013, said researchers at The University of Tasmania in a report released Monday.
Researchers saw a steady increase in shock frequency over each decade with no declines.
The report, published in Nature Sustainability, said that protective measures are needed to avoid future disasters.
The authors studied 226 shocks across 134 countries over the last 53 years and, unlike previous reports, examined the connection between shocks and land-based agriculture and sea-based aquaculture.
“There seems to be this increasing trend in volatility,” said lead author Richard Cottrell, a PhD candidate in quantitative marine science at the University of Tasmania in Australia. “We do need to stop and think about this.”
Extreme weather events are expected to worsen over time because of climate change, the report said, and when countries already struggling to feed their populations experience conflict, the risk of mass-hunger increases.
The researchers found that about one quarter of food resources are accessed through trade, and many countries could not feed their populations without imports, making them particularly vulnerable to food shocks of trading partners.
As the frequency of shocks continues to increase, it leaves what Cottrell called “narrowing windows” between shocks, making it nearly impossible to recover and prepare for the next one.
The report said trade-dependent countries must find ways to store food in preparation for inevitable shocks elsewhere.
Countries must invest in “climate-smart” practices like diversifying plant and animal breeds and varieties and enhance soil quality to speed recovery following floods and droughts, the report said.
“We need to start changing the way we produce food for resiliency,” Cottrell said, adding that he had yet to see much action being taken by wealthy food-producing countries. “Because we are going to see a problem.”
The report was released the same day the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported findings on conflict and hunger.
That report stated that around 56 million people across eight conflict zones are in need of immediate food and livelihood assistance.
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Dan Gilroy’s satirical contemporary art world thriller “Velvet Buzzsaw” will be available to Netflix subscribers worldwide this Friday, but he and his team gave audiences at the Sundance Film Festival a sneak peek at the film Sunday night where the most-common word used to praise it was “weird.”
“Dan is crazy,” Rene Russo, who is married to Gilroy, said in Park City, Utah. “He’s got this crazy imagination and he’s just kind of outside the box.”
The film reunites Gilroy with Jake Gyllenhaal, who starred in his directorial debut “Nightcrawler.” That dark thriller about an ambulance chasing journalist went on to become a box office hit and, so, when Gilroy landed on the idea for “Velvet Buzzsaw,” which would star Gyllenhaal as a snobby critic and Russo as a savvy gallery owner and art dealer, there were a lot of film studios who wanted to put their name behind it. Netflix was one of them.
Gilroy was unsure at first about Netflix, though, so he started reading a little more about the company. He came across a quote where someone said that Netflix was going to destroy the theatrical experience, but following it were 50 comments about how that person must live in New York or Los Angeles or Chicago where, “You can see everything.”
”I suddenly thought, wow, democratization,” Gilroy said. “It is an elitist point of view to think that everybody in the world has access to the things that New York, LA and Chicago have. That really was the deciding factor. If you really want to reach the widest possible audience, here’s this technology that can do this … And what is the theatrical experience? 500 people in a theater? 100? Does 50 count? Does four people on a Friday night on my 50-inch widescreen count? It does to me.”
Films that defy genre
Producer Jennifer Fox, who has been behind films like “Michael Clayton,” said Netflix made it, “At a level that it should have been made at. They got it. And it’s really out there.”
Out there is right, for the ensemble film that co-stars John Malkovich, Toni Collette, Daveed Diggs, Billy Magnussen and relative newcomer Zawe Ashton in which the discovery of a dead artist’s works ends up taking its own body count. But that’s Gilroy’s operating mode for his own films which aren’t bound by traditional genre or constraints.
It’s why “Velvet Buzzsaw” is about everything — the pretentiousness of the contemporary art world, the fluidity of criticism and even sexuality, and, you know, a demon art spirit out for blood.
“If I follow one rule in any form of entertainment it is, ‘Do Not Bore.’ You cannot bore,” Gilroy said. “My (playwright) father pounded that into my head.”
‘Fearless’ actor
Gilroy wrote the critic character Morf, who is as fluid in his sexuality as he is in his art opinions, specifically for Gyllenhaal who he said is, “One of the most fearless actors alive right now.”
“He’s always pushing himself with the craziest ideas that often end up in the movie,” Gilroy said. “I like working with people who want to take a sledgehammer to all this and Jake is that person.”
The feeling is mutual for Gyllenhaal who said their connection is, “Sort of inexplicable.”
Netflix believer
“But I’m not asking any questions about it,” Gyllenhaal said. “I just show up when he asks.”
After the “Velvet Buzzsaw” experience, Gilroy himself is a Netflix believer.
“I couldn’t speak highly enough about Netflix. The traditional studios in some way have created Netflix. The traditional studios have gone from making a broad range of films to doing branded IP and franchises and it has left a void for original, range of films to get made,” Gilroy said. “And Netflix is making them en masse and it’s a very exciting time. I think history is being written right now.”