Month: November 2024

NEW YORK — Likely most people have seen iconic footage of the Beatles performing on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” But how many have seen Paul McCartney during that same U.S. trip feeding seagulls off his hotel balcony?

That moment — as well as George Harrison and John Lennon goofing around by exchanging their jackets — are part of the Disney+ documentary “Beatles ’64,” an intimate look at the English band’s first trip to America that uses rare and newly restored footage. It streams Friday.

“It’s so fun to be the fly on the wall in those really intimate moments,” says Margaret Bodde, who produced alongside Martin Scorsese. “It’s just this incredible gift of time and technology to be able to see it now with the decades of time stripped away so that you really feel like you’re there.”

“Beatles ’64” leans into footage of the 14-day trip filmed by documentarians Albert and David Maysles, who left behind 11 hours of the Fab Four goofing around in New York’s Plaza hotel or traveling. It was restored by Park Road Post in New Zealand.

“It’s beautiful, although it’s black and white and it’s not widescreen,” says director David Tedeschi. “It’s like it was shot yesterday and it captures the youth of the four Beatles and the fans.”

The footage is augmented by interviews with the two surviving members of the band and people whose lives were impacted, including some of the women who as teens stood outside their hotel hoping to catch a glimpse of the Beatles.

“It was like a crazy love,” fan Vickie Brenna-Costa recalls in the documentary. “I can’t really understand it now. But then, it was natural.”

The film shows the four heartthrobs flirting and dancing at the Peppermint Lounge disco, Harrison noodling with a Woody Guthrie riff on his guitar and tells the story of Ronnie Spector sneaking the band out a hotel back exit and up to Harlem to eat barbeque.

The documentary coincides with the release of a box set of vinyl albums collecting the band’s seven U.S. albums released in ’64 and early ’65 — “Meet The Beatles!,” “The Beatles’ Second Album,” “A Hard Day’s Night” (the movie soundtrack), “Something New,” “The Beatles’ Story,” “Beatles ’65” and “The Early Beatles.” They had been out of print on vinyl since 1995.

The Beatles’ U.S. visit in 1964 also included concerts at Carnegie Hall, a gig at the Washington Coliseum in Washington, D.C., and a visit to Miami, where the band met Muhammad Ali. The documentary shows members of the band reading newspaper coverage of themselves.

Viewers may learn that the Beatles — now revered — were often met with ridicule or rudeness from the older generation. At the British Embassy in New York, the four were treated as lower class, while renowned broadcaster Eric Sevareid, doing a piece for CBS, compared the reaction to the Beatles to the German measles.

“You’re nothing but four Elvis Presleys,” one reporter told them during a press conference, to which the boys good-naturedly started gyrating as Ringo Starr screamed “It’s not true!”

“Why the establishment was against them is sort of a mystery to me,” says Tedeschi. “I think older people believed that music would go back to the big bands.”

Musicians like Sananda Maitreya, Ron Isley and Smokey Robinson also discuss the Fab Four and what they took from Black music. There also are interviews with residents of Harlem, critic Joe Queennan and filmmaker David Lynch, who saw the Beatles play the Washington Coliseum.

“Beatles ’64” tries to explain why young people were so besotted by John, Paul, George and Ringo. Their visit came just months after the assassination of President John. F. Kennedy and Tedeschi argues Beatlemania was a salve for a nation in mourning.

“Part of it is I think that the light was just off. They were depressed. Everything was dark. And ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ lit them up,” says Tedeschi.

As McCartney says in the documentary: “Maybe America needed something like the Beatles to lift it out of mourning and just sort of say ‘Life goes on.'”
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NEW YORK — As she anticipates her estranged uncle’s return to the White House, Mary Trump isn’t expecting any future book to catch on like such first-term tell-alls as Michael Wolff’s million-selling Fire and Fury or her own blockbuster, Too Much and Never Enough.

“What else is there to learn?” she says. “And for people who don’t know, the books have been written. It’s all really out in the open now.”

For publishers, Donald Trump’s presidential years were a time of extraordinary sales in political books, helped in part by Trump’s legal threats and angered tweets. According to Circana, which tracks around 85% of the hardcover and paperback market, the genre’s sales nearly doubled from 2015 to 2020, from around 5 million copies to around 10 million.

Besides books by Wolff and Trump, other bestsellers included former FBI Director James Comey’s A Higher Loyalty, former national security adviser John Bolton’s The Room Where it Happened and Bob Woodward’s Fear. Meanwhile, sales for dystopian fiction also jumped, led by Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which was adapted into an award-winning Hulu series.

But interest has dropped back to 2015 levels since Trump left office, according to Circana, and publishers doubt it will again peak so highly. Readers not only showed little interest in books by or about President Joe Biden and his family — they even seemed less excited about Trump-related releases. Mary Trump’s Who Could Ever Love You and Woodward’s War were both popular this fall, but neither has matched the sales of their books written during the first Trump administration.

“We’ve been there many times, with all those books,” HarperCollins publisher Jonathan Burnham says of the various Trump tell-alls. He added that he still sees a market for at least some Trump books — perhaps analyzing the recent election — because “there’s a general, serious smart audience, not politically aligned in a hard way,” one that would welcome “an intelligent voice.”

“It’s like the reboot of any hit TV show,” says Eric Nelson, publisher and vice president of Broadside Books, a conservative imprint of HarperCollins that’s released books by Jared Kushner, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Trump Cabinet nominees Pete Hegseth and Sen. Marco Rubio. “You’re not hoping for ratings like last time, just better ratings than the boring show it’s replacing.”

In the days following Trump’s victory, The Handmaid’s Tale and George Orwell’s 1984 returned to bestseller lists, along with more contemporary works such as Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny, a 2017 bestseller that expanded upon a Facebook post Snyder wrote soon after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. Books appealing to pro-Trump readers also surged, including those written by Cabinet picks — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s The Real Anthony Fauci and Hegseth’s The War on Warriors — and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, his 2016 memoir that’s sold hundreds of thousands of copies since Trump selected him as his running mate.

First lady Melania Trump’s memoir, Melania, came out in October and has been high on Amazon.com bestseller lists for weeks, even as critics found it contained little newsworthy information. According to Circana, it has sold more than 200,000 copies, a figure that does not include books sold directly through her website.

“The Melania book has done extraordinarily well, better than we thought,” says Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt. “After Election Day, we sold everything we had of it.”

Conservative books have sold steadily over the years, and several publishers — most recently Hachette Book Group — have imprints dedicated to those readers. Publishers expect at least some critical books to reach bestseller lists — if only because of the tradition of the publishing market favoring the party out of power. But the nature of what those books would look like is uncertain. Perhaps a onetime insider will have a falling out with Trump and write a memoir, like Bolton or former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, or maybe some of his planned initiatives, whether mass deportation or the prosecution of his political foes, will lead to investigative works.

A new Fire and Fury is doubtful, with the originally only possible because Wolff enjoyed extraordinary access, spending months around Trump and his White House staff. Members of the president-elect’s current team have already issued a statement saying they have refused to speak with Wolff, calling the author a “known peddler of fake news who routinely concocts situations, conversations, and conclusions that never happened.”

A publicist for Wolff declined to comment.

Woodward, who interviewed Trump at length for the 2020 bestseller Rage, told The Associated Press that he had written so much about Trump and other presidents that he wasn’t sure what he’d take on next. He doesn’t rule out another Trump book, but that will depend in part on the president-elect, how “out of control he gets,” Woodward said, and how far he is able to go.

“He wants to be the imperial president, where he gets to decide everything and no one’s going to get in his way,” Woodward said. “He’s run into some brick walls in the past and there may be more brick walls. I don’t know what will happen. I’ll be watching and doing some reporting, but I’m still undecided.”

5 bestselling Trump-related books, per Circana

Too Much and Never Enough, by Mary Trump: 1,248,212 copies
Fire and Fury, by Michael Wolff: 936,116 copies
Fear, by Bob Woodward: 872,014 copies
The Room Where It Happened, by John Bolton: 676,010 copies
Rage, by Bob Woodward: 549,685 copies

These figures represent total sales provided by Circana, which tracks about 85% of the print market and does not include e-book or audiobook sales.
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After more than five years of frenetic reconstruction work, Notre Dame Cathedral showed its new self to the world Friday, with rebuilt soaring ceilings and creamy good-as-new stonework erasing somber memories of its devastating fire in 2019.

Images broadcast live of a site visit by French President Emmanuel Macron showed the inside of the iconic cathedral as worshippers might have experienced it back in medieval times, its wide, open spaces filled with bright light on a crisp and sunny winter’s day that lit up the vibrant colors of the stained-glass windows.

Outside, the monument is still a construction site, with scaffolding and cranes. But the renovated interior — shown in its full glory Friday for the first time before the public is allowed back in on December 8 — proved to be breathtaking.

Stonemasons fixed the ripped-open ceilings

Gone are the gaping holes that the blaze tore into the vaulted ceilings, leaving charred piles of debris. New stonework has been carefully pieced together to repair and fill the wounds that had left the cathedral’s insides exposed to the elements. Delicate golden angels look on from the centerpiece of one of the rebuilt ceilings, soaring again above the transept.

The cathedral’s bright, cream-colored limestone walls look brand new, cleaned not only of dust from the fire but also of grime that had accumulated for centuries.

The cathedral attracted millions of worshippers and visitors annually before the April 15, 2019, fire forced its closure and turned the monument in the heart of Paris into a no-go zone except to artisans, architects and others mobilized for the reconstruction.

Macron entered via the cathedral’s giant and intricately carved front doors and stared up at the ceilings in wonder. He was accompanied by his wife, Brigitte, the archbishop of Paris and others.

Techniques new and old deployed

Powerful vacuum cleaners were used to first remove toxic dust released when the fire melted the cathedral’s lead roofs.

Fine layers of latex were then sprayed onto the surfaces and removed a few days later, taking dirt away with them. Cleaning gels were also used on some walls that had been painted, removing many years of accumulated dirt and revealing their bright colors once again.

Carpenters worked by hand like their medieval counterparts as they hewed giant oak beams to rebuild the roof and spire that collapsed like a flaming spear into the inferno. The beams show the marks of the carpenters’ handiwork, with dents made on the woodwork by their hand axes.

Some 2,000 oak trees were felled to rebuild roof frameworks so dense and intricate that they are nicknamed “the forest.”

Sneak peek ahead of reopening

Macron’s visit kicked off a series of events ushering in the reopening of the 12th-century Gothic masterpiece.

Macron will return on December 7 to deliver an address and attend the consecration of the new altar during a solemn Mass the following day.

Macron’s administration is hailing the reconstruction as a symbol of national unity and French can-do.
…

Some images from the 98th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in New York.
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Since 2004, former New York Times editor and now artist Sheryl Oring has been giving Americans a chance to speak their truth to the world. Dressed in 1950s secretary attire, she invites the public to speak their mind and records it on her vintage typewriter as part of a project called, “I Wish To Say.” Elena Wolf has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Vladimir Badikov
…

November 27th marks the birthday of iconic American guitarist and songwriter Jimi Hendrix. In his hometown of Seattle, the Museum of Pop Culture, inspired by his groundbreaking music, celebrated his enduring legacy with family members, former colleagues, and fans. Natasha Mozgovaya has the story.
…

Alfonso Cuarón spoke with VOA at the 2024 Miami Film Festival, where the director won a lifetime achievement award from Miami Dade College for his contributions to cinema. He urged aspiring filmmakers to study the history of cinema and the development of film language.

See the full story here.    
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JOHANNESBURG — South African writer and poet Breyten Breytenbach, a staunch opponent of the former white-minority government’s apartheid policy of racial oppression, has died in Paris, his family announced on Sunday. He was 85. 

Breytenbach was a celebrated wordsmith, a leading voice in literature in Afrikaans — an offshoot of Dutch that was developed by white settlers — and a fierce critic of apartheid that was imposed against the country’s Black majority between 1948 and 1990. 

He moved to Paris but on a clandestine trip to his home country in 1975 he was arrested on allegations that he assisted Nelson Mandela’s then-outlawed African National Congress group in its sabotage campaign against the white-minority government. 

He was convicted of treason and served seven years in prison. French president Francois Mitterrand helped secure his release in 1982. 

Upon his release, Breytenbach based himself in Paris, becoming a French citizen, and continued his anti-apartheid activism.

Breytenbach is best known for “Confessions of an Albino Terrorist,” his account of his imprisonment and the events leading to it. 

His work addressed themes of exile, identity and justice, his family said in a statement on Sunday. 

“Known for his masterful poetry collections in Afrikaans, as well as autobiographical works such as ‘The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist’ and ‘A Season in Paradise,’ he fearlessly addressed themes of exile, identity and justice,” his family said in a statement. 

Breytenbach was a poet, novelist, painter and activist whose work touched on and influenced literature and the arts both domestically and abroad, his family added. 

He was born in the Western Cape province in 1939 but spent much of his life abroad. 

He joined Okhela, an ideological wing of South Africa’s African National Congress, in exile, but remained deeply connected to his South African roots. 

He is survived by his wife, Yolande, daughter Daphnée and two grandsons. 

Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse. 
…

New York — With a combined $270 million in worldwide ticket sales, “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” breathed fresh life into a box office that has struggled lately, leading to one of the busiest moviegoing weekends of the year. 

Jon M. Chu’s lavish big-budget musical “Wicked,” starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, debuted with $114 million domestically and $164.2 million globally for Universal Pictures, according to studio estimates Sunday. That made it the third-biggest opening weekend of the year, behind only “Deadpool & Wolverine” and “Inside Out 2.” It’s also a record for a Broadway musical adaptation. 

Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II,” a sequel to his 2000 best picture-winning original, launched with $55.5 million in ticket sales. With a price tag of around $250 million to produce it, “Gladiator II” was a big bet by Paramount Pictures to return to the Coliseum with a largely new cast, led by Denzel Washington and Paul Mescal. While it opened with a touch less than the $60 million predicted in domestic ticket sales, “Gladiator II” has performed well overseas. It added $50.5 million internationally. 

The collision of the two movies led to some echoes of the “Barbenheimer” effect of last year, when “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” launched simultaneously. The nickname this time, “Glicked,” wasn’t quite as catchy and the cultural imprint was also notably less. Few people sought out a double feature this time. The domestic grosses in 2023 – $162 million for “Barbie” and $82 million for “Oppenheimer” – were also higher. 

“Glicked” falls short of “Barbenheimer” 

For Universal, which distributed “Oppenheimer” last year, the weekend was more a triumph of “Wicked” than it was of “Glicked.” 

“We saw an opportunity to dominate a weekend and get a very large running start into the Thanksgiving holiday,” said Jim Orr, distribution chief for Universal. “We’re very confident that it will play ridiculously well through the Christmas corridor and into the new year.” 

But the counter-programming effect was still potent for “Wicked” and “Gladiator II,” which likewise split broadly along gender lines. And it was again the female-leaning release – “Wicked,” like “Barbie” before it – that easily won the weekend. About 72% of ticket buyers for “Wicked” were female, while 61% of those seeing “Gladiator II” were male. 

“Standing on their own, each of these movies may have done pretty much what they did, but it’s hard to know,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. “Raising awareness can indeed lead to an increase in box office. Let’s put it this way: They didn’t hurt each other at all.” 

Massive marketing campaigns paved the way for opening weekend 

While “Barbenheimer” benefitted enormously from meme-spread word-of-mouth, both “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” leaned on all-out marketing blitzes. 

The “Gladiator II” campaign featured everything from a much-debated Airbnb cross-promotion with the actual Colosseum in Rome to simultaneously running a one-minute trailer on more than 4,000 TV networks, radio station and digital platforms. 

The “Wicked” onslaught went even further, with pink and green themed “Wickedly Delicious” Starbucks drinks, Stanley mugs and Mattel dolls (some of which led to an awkward recall ). Its stars made appearances at the Met Gala and the Olympics. 

“We had roughly 400 global brand partners on ‘Wicked,’ so the campaign was inescapable, said Orr. “And our cast, led by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, worked so hard on this. They were everywhere. They did everything we asked them to do.” 

Going into the weekend, box office was down about 11% from last year and some 25% from pre-pandemic times. That meant this week’s two headline films led a much-needed resurgence for theaters. With “Moana 2” releasing Wednesday, Hollywood might be looking at historic sales over the Thanksgiving holiday. 

The two films boosted sluggish box office performance 

“This weekend’s two strong openers are invigorating a box office that fell apart after a good summer,” said David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter for Franchise Entertainment. 

Though “Wicked” will face some direct competition from “Moana 2,” it would seem better set up for a long and lucrative run in theaters than “Gladiator II.” Though some have dinged “Wicked” for running long, at 2 hours and 40 minutes, the film has had mostly stellar reviews. Audiences gave it an “A” on CinemaScore. The reception for “Wicked” has been strong enough that Oscar prognosticators expect it to be a contender for best picture at the Academy Awards, among other categories. 

Producers, perhaps sensing a hit, also took the step of splitting “Wicked” in two. Part two, already filmed, is due out next November. Each “Wicked” installation cost around $150 million to make. 

“Gladiator II” has also enjoyed good reviews, particularly for Washington’s charismatic performance. Audience scores, though, were weaker, with ticket buyers giving it a “B” on CinemaScore. The film will make up for some of that, however, with robust international sales. It launched in many overseas markets a week ago, and has already accrued $165.5 million internationally. 

Coming in a distant third place for the weekend was “Red One,” the Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans holiday movie turned action film. In its second week of release, the Amazon MGM Studios release grossed $13.3 million to bring its two-week global haul to $117 million. At a cost of $250 million to make, “Red One” is the season’s biggest flop, though it could recoup some value for Amazon if it’s more popular once it begins streaming. 

Final domestic figures will be released Monday. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore: 

1. “Wicked,” $114 million. 

2. “Gladiator II,” $55.5 million. 

3. “Red One,” $13.3 million. 

4. “Bonhoeffer: Pastor Spy Assassin,” $5.1 million. 

5. “Venom: The Last Dance,” $4 million. 

6. “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” $3.5 million. 

7. “Heretic,” $2.2 million. 

8. “The Wild Robot,” $2 million. 

9. “Smile 2,” $1.1 million. 

10. “A Real Pain,” $1.1 million.
    …

BRISBANE, Australia — Australian Elvis Smylie shot a 4-under 67 to win the 54-hole Australian PGA on Sunday by two shots after a final round shootout with his compatriot and former mentor Cameron Smith.

Smylie finished on 14-under 199, two ahead of Smith who had a 2-under final round 69. Smith’s LIV tour teammate Mark Leishman and Australian Anthony Quayle shared third place on 11 under at the par-71 Royal Queensland.

Heavy rain showers and an unplayable course on Friday forced the second round to be abandoned and made the joint Australasian PGA and European Tour event a 54-hole tournament.

Five years ago Smylie, the son of former Australian tennis pro Liz Smylie. won the Cameron Smith Scholarship which allowed him to spend a week at Smith’s Florida home where he was able to learn to live and practice as a PGA Tour professional.

Now 22, Smylie started Sunday’s final round tied atop the leaderboard with Smith at 10 under par.

Smith was the 2022 British Open winner at St. Andrews and previously won the Australian PGA in 2017, 2018 and 2022. Smylie had a breakthrough win in last month’s West Australian Open.

The pair traded birdies until the sixth hole when there was a two-shot turnaround when Smylie birdied and Smith bogeyed. Smylie, who led after a first round 65, had four birdies in his first seven holes and played his outward nine in four-under 32, turning at 14 under.

He had good ups and downs under pressure at the par four 10th and 12th holes, using his three wood to bunt the ball onto the greens from close range.

With a bogey at the ninth hole, Smith turned in 35, having dropped back into a second place tie at 11-under with Quayle, Mark Leishman and Australia David Micheluzzi.

Smith had another bogey on the par-4 14th which dropped him back to 10 under while Quayle finished with an 8-under 63 to take an early clubhouse lead at 11-under.

Smylie was under pressure at the par-5 15th when he hit his second well to the left of the green. Again he scrambled to save par while Smith birdied to move back to 11-under, cutting the lead to three shots.

Smith trimmed Smylie’s lead to two when he holed out from off the green for birdie at the par-3 17th, winning a large cheer from the crowd on the tournament’s party hole. Smylie’s birdie putt from six feet slipped past.

Smylie held his nerve when he put his tee shot on the 18th into light rough with the broad trunk of a tree between him and the green 186 meters away. He curled his around the tree, but into a greenside bunker.

Smylie played a nerveless shot from the sand to three feet and holed out for par, finishing with 11 consecutive pars. He managed to get up and down from precarious positions six times on the back nine.

“It’s a dream come true,” Smylie said. “I won’t forget this day playing with Cam and [Leishman].

“My short game was great; I definitely saved myself.”

The Australian PGA is the first event of the 2025 European Tour season.

Next week, many of the same players will travel to Melbourne for the Australian Open, also on the European Tour. It is being played concurrently with the Women’s Australian Open at famed sandbelt courses Kingston Heath and Victoria.
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JAYAPURA, Indonesia — On the southeastern coast of the city of Jayapura, Petronela Merauje walked from house to house in her floating village inviting women to join her the next morning in the surrounding mangrove forests.

Merauje and the women of her village, Enggros, practice the tradition of Tonotwiyat, which literally means “working in the forest.” For six generations, women from the 700-strong Papuan population there have worked among the mangroves collecting clams, fishing and gathering firewood.

“The customs and culture of Papuans, especially those of us in Enggros village, is that women are not given space and place to speak in traditional meetings, so the tribal elders provide the mangrove forest as our land,” Merauje said. It’s “a place to find food, a place for women to tell stories, and women are active every day and earn a living every day.”

The forest is a short 13 kilometers away from downtown Jayapura, the capital city of Papua, Indonesia’s easternmost province. It’s been known as the women’s forest since 2016, when Enggros’ leader officially changed its name. Long before that, it had already been a space just for women. But as pollution, development and biodiversity loss shrink the forest and stunt plant and animal life, those in the village fear an important part of their traditions and livelihoods will be lost. Efforts to shield it from devastation have begun but are still relatively small.

Women have their own space — but it’s shrinking

One early morning, Merauje and her 15-year-old daughter took a small motorboat toward the forest. Stepping off on Youtefa Bay, mangrove trees all around, they stood chest-deep in the water with buckets in hand, wiggling their feet in the mud to find bia noor, or soft-shell clams. The women collect these for food, along with other fish.

“The women’s forest is our kitchen,” said Berta Sanyi, another woman from Enggros village.

That morning, another woman joined the group looking for firewood, hauling dry logs onto her boat. And three other women joined on a rowboat.

Women from the next village, Tobati, also have a women’s forest nearby. The two Indigenous villages are only 2 kilometers apart, and they’re culturally similar, with Enggros growing out of Tobati’s population decades ago. In the safety of the forest, women of both villages talk about issues at home with one another and share grievances away from the ears of the rest of the village.

Alfred Drunyi, the leader of Drunyi tribe in Enggros, said that having dedicated spaces for women and men is a big part of the village’s culture. There are tribal fines if a man trespasses and enters the forest, and the amount is based on how guilty the community judges the person to be.

“They should pay it with our main treasure, the traditional beads, maybe with some money. But the fines should be given to the women,” Drunyi said.

But Sanyi, 65, who’s been working in the forest since she was just 17, notes that threats to the space come from elsewhere.

Development on the bay has turned acres of forest into large roads, including a 700-meter bridge into Jayapura that passes through Enggros’ pier. Jayapura’s population has exploded in recent decades, and around 400,000 people live in the city — the largest on the island.

In turn, the forest has shrunk. Nearly six decades ago, the mangrove forest in Youtefa Bay was about 514 hectares. Estimates say it’s now less than half that.

“I am so sad when I see the current situation of the forest,” Sanyi said, “because this is where we live.” She said many residents, including her own children, are turning to work in Jayapura instead of maintaining traditions.

Pollution puts traditions and health at risk

Youtefa Bay, where the sea’s brackish water and five rivers in Papua meet, serves as the gathering bowl for the waste that runs through the rivers as they cross through Jayapura.

Plastic bottles, tarpaulins and pieces of wood are seen stuck between the mangrove roots. The water around the mangrove forest is polluted and dark.

After dozens of years being able to feel the clams on the bay with her feet, Sanyi said she now often has to feel through trash first. And once she removes the trash and gets to the muddy ground where the clams live, there are many fewer than there used to be.

Paula Hamadi, 53, said that she never saw the mangrove forest as bad as it is now. For years, she’s been going to the forest almost every day during the low tide in the morning to search for clams.

“It used to be different,” Hamadi said. “From 8 a.m. to 8:30 in the morning, I could get one can. But now, I only get trash.”

The women used to be able to gather enough clams to sell some at the nearest village, but now their small hauls are reserved for eating with their families.

A study in 2020 found that high concentrations of lead from waste from homes and businesses were found at several points in the bay. Lead can be toxic to humans and aquatic organisms, and the study suggests it has contaminated several species that are often consumed by the people of Youtefa Bay.

Other studies also showed that populations of shellfish and crab in the bay were declining, said John Dominggus Kalor, a lecturer on fisheries and marine sciences at Cenderawasih University.

“The threats related to heavy metal contamination, microplastics, and public health are high,” Kalor said. “In the future, it will have an impact on health.”

Some are trying to save the land

Some of the mangrove areas have been destroyed for development, leading to degradation throughout the forest.

Mangroves can absorb the shocks of extreme weather events, like tsunamis, and provide ecosystems with the needed environment to thrive. They also serve social and cultural functions for the women, whose work is mostly done between the mangroves.

“In the future people will say that there used to be a women’s forest here” that disappeared because of development and pollution, said Kalor.

Various efforts to preserve it have been made, including the residents of Enggros village themselves. Merauje and other women from Enggros are trying to start mangrove tree nurseries and, where possible, plant new mangrove trees in the forest area.

“We plant new trees, replace the dead ones, and we also clean up the trash around Youtefa Bay,” Merauje said. “I do that with my friends to conserve, to maintain this forest.”

Beyond efforts to reforest it, Kalor said there also needs to be guarantees that more of the forest won’t be flattened for development in the future.

There is no regional regulation to protect Youtefa Bay and specifically the women’s forests, but Kalor thinks it would help prevent deforestation in the future.

“That should no longer be done in our bay,” he said. 
…

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA — Argentina produces some of the best football players on the planet and has three World Cup titles to prove it.

Off the field, though, a major power struggle is transpiring between Argentina President Javier Milei and Argentine Football Association president Claudio Tapia.

Tapia opposes Milei’s effort to enable football clubs to become sports limited companies, inspired by the model of the English Premier League. He wants clubs to continue to belong to members — not to private shareholders.

The government threatened to intervene in AFA due to alleged irregularities in Tapia’s reelection to a third term.

Amid this struggle, FIFA and CONMEBOL warned that any government interference in the management of AFA will result in its disaffiliation, and its teams will be marginalized from all competitions.

What did Milei’s decree say?

Milei, a libertarian economist who has pushed economic deregulation, signed a decree last December enabling football clubs organized as civil associations to transform into public limited companies. The former do not pursue a commercial purpose, while PLCs seek profit.

The government also gave sports associations, federations and confederations a period of one year from August to modify their statutes and accept this new form of organization.

The new model is optional and clubs that want to transform into sports corporations will require the vote of two-thirds of their members present at an extraordinary assembly.

Milei said that the time has come to end “poor socialism” in football and predicted a windfall of investment.

What does the federation say?

AFA says its statutes prohibit the affiliation and participation in its tournaments of sports corporations. It won a court order blocking the decree. That ruling was appealed by the government and the Supreme Court will have the last word.

“The clubs need to fulfill the function they fulfill as the civil associations that they are,” Tapia said. “I am convinced that that is its essence. Most clubs have an established statute that civil associations are not to be changed.”

If a club decides to become a public limited company, it will be disaffiliated, AFA warned.

An imperfect model?

Argentina is a renowned producer of football talent — Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona start the list.

Despite the success developing young players, most clubs are forced to let them go earlier to be able to financially sustain not only their professional team, but also other sports and social activities in the club.

In Argentine football “we are 40 years behind,” said Guillermo Tofoni, a FIFA agent who is also an adviser in Milei’s government. “It is played any day, at any time, the tournaments (formats) change, the corruption of the referees. All this combination means that the television networks do not pay what they deserve, and a vicious and non-virtuous circle is generated.”

Argentine football receives less than $100 million a year for television rights, far below the billions of dollars shared by English Premier League clubs.

According to Tofoni, with genuine private capital investment “clubs can keep their players until they are 24, 25 years old, and sell them to the European market when it is convenient, not because they need to.”

Are clubs willing to try it?

So far, Estudiantes La Plata and Talleres de Córdoba are the only clubs publicly in favor of allowing private capital to enter football.

“I am pragmatic, I understand that soccer is a business. They leave us out of business, Argentina, Argentine football is out of business,” Estudiantes president Juan Sebastián Verón said. “Let us not be afraid of growth, of the new, which can take us to a very important place in the future.”

The former Argentina midfielder recently signed a pre-agreement with the American businessman Foster Gillett, who will invest $150 million in the club.

In turn, the American investor will benefit from future sales of players, the commercial exploitation of the stadium’s name and profits from competing in international tournaments. The agreement must be endorsed by the members of “Pincha” in an extraordinary assembly.

Tapia’s reelection bad news for Milei?

Amid the dispute, Tapia called an election of new AFA authorities a year early. As the only candidate, Tapia was reelected to a third term on October 17, thus ensuring he would continue in office until 2028 — a year after the end of Milei’s term.

“It looks like Venezuela with (President Nicolás) Maduro celebrated Christmas earlier,” said Milei, who a few days later signed a decree that took away social security benefits from AFA.

In turn, the General Inspection of Justice, a body dependent on the Ministry of Justice and in charge of regulating civil associations, challenged Tapia’s reelection and threatened to intervene in the AFA.

However, a civil appeals court upheld the October vote.

What does FIFA and CONMEBOL say?

Both entities are closely following the dispute. In official notes, they indicated that only the local federation can set the statutory framework of the clubs and warned that state interference is a cause for disaffiliation.

“The AFA, and only the AFA, is, in view of the legal framework of FIFA, the only entity competent to decide, through its legitimate associative governing bodies, aspects relating to the legal nature of the clubs affiliated to the same,” FIFA said.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino also congratulated Tapia on his reelection and thanked him for “all his efforts, work and important contribution to the development of our sport.”
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