Coronavirus lockdowns have changed the way Earth moves

A reduction in seismic noise because of changes in human activity is a boon for geoscientists.

Black Death at Tournai

‘A Once-in-a-Century Pathogen’

A little over one hundred years ago, a novel virus emerged from an unknown animal reservoir and seeded itself silently in settlements around the world. Then, in the closing months of World War I, as if from nowhere, the infection exploded in multiple countries and continents at more or less the same time. From Boston to Cape Town, and London to Mumbai, the “Spanish flu,” so-called because the first widely reported outbreak occurred in Madrid in May 1918, swept like wildfire through cities and communities both large and small

Luanda Leaks: Who is Rui Pinto, the Portuguese hacker behind the leak?

The lawyers for Rui Pinto, 31, said on Monday their client had given a hard drive with the files to the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa (PPLAAF) in 2018.

Now it comes the remaining: portuguese electricity company, portuguese banks, portuguese governments... Huge!

"In possession of the investigation are ten hard drives encrypted by Rui Pinto and which the PJ has not yet been able to access."

Krzysztof Penderecki (1933 - 2020)

Emmanuelle Haïm: early music is not music for an elite audience

This is music that some people might think that it’s very specialized or they might think it’s not alive or could be boring, contrary to Romantic music, but I think it’s expressive, passionate, and it’s engaged and I think it can talk to a lot of people. 

New study sheds light on coronavirus infection mechanism

researchers describe how they went on to compare the structure of the pandemic coronavirus with related strains found in bats and pangolins. They found that both animal strains could bind to the same human ACE-2 receptor, supporting previous work that suggests the human coronavirus came from bats either directly, or via pangolins that themselves became infected by bats. Before infecting humans, the animal strains picked up key mutations that allowed the virus to spread more easily in humans.

18 of the most talented, revolutionary and formidable classical legends of all time - the great conductors (it misses Carlos Kleiber! Namely...)

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla has had a meteoric rise to fame since being named Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in 2016 (an orchestra that's developed a knack for spotting talent, as this list demonstrates). Tickets to her concerts sell like hot cakes and the music world is abuzz with talk of Mirga!

World Theatre Day

Since 1962 World Theatre Day has been celebrated by ITI Centres, ITI Cooperating Members, theatre professionals, theatre organizations, theatre universities and theatre lovers all over the world on the 27th of March.

Marin Alsop on Art, Community & Leadership

she inspired the Baltimore players to join her in creating a program to mentor children from Baltimore's low-income neighborhoods. The program, called OrchKids, has grown from 30 participants to 3,000 year-round. 

With only 20% more population than Poland, Spain registers 350% more deaths

Although South Korea has 51.7 million inhabitants (compared to 46.6 million in Spain), their numbers of affected are considerably lower than what we have in Spain, 

Spain's health ministry has announced 838 new coronavirus deaths, marking the country's highest daily jump in fatalities and bringing its total to 6,528.

Celebrating forest life on International Forests Day

with at least 50 million hectares of forests across the world likely to have been destroyed for profit in the decade to 2020, the need to protect our forests has never been greater.

Anu Tali has helped the orchestra develop its sound, pushing the ensemble to explore new repertoire

Jordan said Tali has helped the orchestra develop its sound, pushing the ensemble to explore new repertoire. Under her baton, the orchestra has tackled a wealth of difficult Nordic and Russian music, such as the Sibelius works. It all adds up to an advancement of the orchestra “to a point it’s a noticeable difference.”

Kara Walker: Barack Obama as Othello "The Moor"

"La France" at its worst

Mantovani in particular isn't just some conductor. He is the director of the Paris Conservatory (formally, the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique), and as such he possesses not just a very big soapbox, but a fair amount of power to help make or break emerging French talent.

Slovak Police Arrest Judges in Kuciak’s Murder Case

Slovak police said they have arrested 18 people, including 13 judges, who allegedly obstructed justice in the case of the murder of journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancee in 2018.

100 Women of the Year (it misses, Nadia Boulanger, Pina Bausch, Sabine Mayer, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Yayoi Kusama, Martha Argerich, Kaija Saariaho, Olga Neuwirth, Unsuk Chin, Yuja Wang... Namely)

Trail of Broken Lives Leads to Kyiv Call Center

“make money fast.” After entering his contact information, he received a call from a man calling himself “Jorge Alvarado” and purporting to be a sales consultant for a cryptocurrency investment company called CryptoMB. He borrowed thousands of dollars from family members to keep making investments, then for fake fees the staff at CryptoMB convinced him he needed to pay in order to withdraw his profits. He showed journalists a forged letter from HM Revenue & Customs confirming he had paid the “tax.”

Tibetan children denied classes in their mother tongue

“The Chinese government is violating its international legal obligations to provide Tibetan-language instruction to Tibetans.”

Fanfare for the uncommon woman conductor

In no particular order, here's the march of the women.

Xian Zhang prepares each concert meticulously

Before going on stage, Xian always takes 15 minutes to calm her thoughts in order to concentrate on the music and her work during the concert. On stage, you have to forget yourself, you have to be one with the music, surrender to it; it is this unique moment that Xian aspires to and loves

Hounded by war, can Idlib's desperate civilians outrun final assault?

two dogs slept on the tomb of a man who had died long ago, their emaciated frames slipping easily through the rusty fence that surrounded it. Children stared vacantly from behind tombstones. Their elders beckoned to them to join them in their mud-covered tents.

There were no planes in the skies for the first time in weeks, and the road in front that stretched from Idlib’s merciless battlefields to the right, and the safety of Turkey six miles to the left, was no longer cluttered with desperate, fleeing families.

Sustainable development must account for pandemic risk

Disease emergence correlates with human population density and wildlife diversity, and is driven by anthropogenic changes such as deforestation and expansion of agricultural land (i.e., land-use change), intensification of livestock production, and increased hunting and trading of wildlife

Large ecosystems that have been around for thousands of years could collapse in less than 50 years

Facing the music: Susanna Mälkki

What, in your opinion, is the best new piece written in last half century?

Impossible to say, there are so many fantastic works... Today my answer is Ligeti’s Piano Concerto. It’s so rich, it has a lot of wit, real groove as well as tragedy. It’s a gem.

Iran Launched an App That Claimed to Diagnose Coronavirus. Instead, It Collected Location Data on Millions of People

Iran has been criticized for its lack of transparency and many experts have predicted that the real infection rate and death toll are much higher than being reported.

“The regime’s survival is intertwined with suppression, surveillance, espionage, and intruding in the most personal affairs of the Iranian people,” Shahin Gobadi of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, base din Parid, told VICE News. “It does not spare any opportunity to intensify its efforts, even at the time of such a major crisis such as coronavirus.”

Powerful male gatekeepers kept women at the margins of the art market

The report also found that 66% of postgraduate art and design students were female in 2017, but just 28% of artists at major commercial galleries were women, a drop from 29% in 2016.

Flight MH17: Trial opens of four accused of murdering 298 over Ukraine

The roar of planes is audible. Schiphol's high-security justice complex is right next door to the runway where flight MH17 took off. But no-one is expecting any of the four suspects to fly in to face justice.

During day two of the MH17 criminal court proceedings in the Netherlands, the prosecution team disclosed that the Russian Federation had challenged the authenticity of a video recording of the BUK Telar, made on 17 July 2014, near the presumed launch site at Snizhne. This video is a crucial piece in the chain of evidence showing the contiguous movement of the BUK Telar convoy

China’s coronavirus cover-up

after an explosion at a petrochemical factory, media organisations were told to censor “negative commentary related to petrochemical projects”. And after parents protested about tainted vaccines, the media were instructed that only information provided by official sources could be used on front pages.

"Humanity" does not deserve to be saved...

by 2030 the African forests’ capacity to remove carbon will decrease by 14%, while Amazonian forests may stop removing carbon dioxide altogether by 2035.

At least 1,000 women fall victim to honour killings in Pakistan each year

According to estimates by the Honour Based Violence Awareness Network, at least 1,000 women fall victim to honour killings in Pakistan each year.

Faster-Than-Light Speeds Could Be Why Gamma-Ray Bursts Seem to Go Backwards in Time

When a charged particle travelling at near light-speed enters water, it moves faster than the Cherenkov radiation it produces, and therefore can hypothetically appear to be in two places at once: one image appearing to move forward in time and the other appearing to move backwards.

Frida Kahlo: selfportrait with thorn necklace

Mariss Jansons: if they (young conductors) are pushed too fast, it’s bad for them and the orchestra

“My own development was very slow, I did not really start to conduct professionally until I was 28. I am amazed at how young some conducts are nowadays. Of course, if they are incredibly talented they can do it, but if they are pushed too fast, it’s bad for them and the orchestra, which cannot feel confident if they sense the conductor does not know his job.”

Why haven’t more women been considered great artists throughout Western history?

They reframe the traditional question “Why haven’t there been more great women artists in Western history?”. Instead they ask: “Why haven’t more women been considered great artists throughout Western history?”

Boulez Saal

In 1964, Daniel Barenboim and Pierre Boulez performed Béla Bártok’s First Piano Concerto at the recently inaugurated Philharmonie in Berlin. In 1980, Daniel Barenboim and the Orchestre de Paris premiered Boulez’s ‘Notations I – IV’. In that same year, Pierre Boulez met Frank Gehry in Los Angeles while working with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

21 praises to Tara

Namibia still waiting for a German apology

Tens of thousands of members of the two ethnic groups were killed in the genocide in German South West Africa after they rebelled against colonial rule. The Herero and Nama also lost their livestock and land. Until today, many live in bitter poverty.