"Animate composition in space"

To deflect attention from its human rights abuses

The paid content in these supplements is nothing less than a deliberate attempt by the  CCP to promote itself to an international audience and deflect attention from its human rights abuses. 

In late April, Wangchen, a 20 year old from eastern Tibet, gathered with friends to commemorate the Panchen Lama’s 30th birthday. The group called for the release of the Panchen Lama, who was detained as a boy in 1995 and has been missing ever since. They also called for the Panchen Lama and the exiled Dalai Lama to one day be reunited. Wangchen was arrested. When his aunt, Dolkar, shared the news of Wangchen’s arrest, she too was charged. Wangchen was found guilty of leading “a conspicuous protest in public against the law of the land”, 

“State capture”

Ana Gomes, a career diplomat turned anticorruption campaigner and one of Pinto’s most vocal supporters, said in a recent interview that she believed Benfica’s outsize influence had given it a privileged status in Portuguese society, particularly when it came to legal matters. The phrase she used to describe that status — “state capture” — refers to the notion that private entities like corporations, or maybe even a popular sports team, can grow so powerful that they are able, if they choose, to unduly influence the state itself.

Coronavirus detected on particles of air pollution

The potential role of air pollution particles is linked to the broader question of how the coronavirus is transmitted. Large virus-laden droplets from infected people’s coughs and sneezes fall to the ground within a metre or two. But much smaller droplets, less than 5 microns in diameter, can remain in the air for minutes to hours and travel further.

The test kits formed a much-publicized part of Chinese aid shipments and sales to European countries stricken by the virus, but were soon plagued by controversy. Most famously, Spain returned a batch of kits to a Chinese manufacturer, Shenzhen Bioeasy Biotechnology, after they were found to be wildly inaccurate.

A report titled Surviving and Thriving in the 21st Century, published today by the Commission for the Human Future, has isolated ten potentially catastrophic threats to human survival

Amy Moran-Thomas, the Alfred Henry and Jean Morrison Hayes Career Development Associate Professor of Anthropology at MIT, has been awarded the 2020 Levitan Prize in the Humanities

In defence of viruses

For those of us who feel that particular viruses are evil, even metaphorically, we should remember the words of Carl Jung: “Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.”

The Great Terror

After Soviet geologist Yuri Bilibin’s expedition to Kolyma in 1928 he claimed that its subsoil contained more gold than the remaining territory of the entire Soviet Union. When the turbulence of the Revolution and the Civil War ended, the Soviet state was able to mine the gold in the Far East. But to reach that gold under the surface, Kolyma would need a labor force, and that’s how the Gulag camps appeared.

Depending on the prescribed sentence, the order established two categories: the first, “the most hostile elements”, was subject to death by shooting; the others, the second category, were to be imprisoned in Soviet concentration camps and prisons. The order also established a quota for each region by category, indicating that the Soviet leadership considered its victims as potential rather than actual sources of resistance and that the operation was preventive and intimidatory. It also meant that the Soviet police was not expected to provide real and convincing evidence. Eventually, regional authorities and police would significantly exceed the initial quotas.

The vory were creatures of the Gulag—imprisonment being a requirement for inclusion—and rare creatures at that. In the West, you caught glimpses of them in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago and in Eugenia Ginsburg’s memoirs; in his Kolyma Tales, Varlam Shalamov discussed them at length.

“The night search, the most degrading procedure, was frequently repeated. “Get up! Get undressed! Hands up! Out into the hall! Line up against the wall.” Naked we were especially frightened. “Among the blind, the one-eyed is king,” and next to them I was still a hero—for the time being. Our hair was undone. What were they looking for? What more could they take away from us? There was something, however: they pulled out all the ties that had been holding up the nuns' skirts and our underwear.”

India: A Doctor Was Assaulted (by the police!) On Her Way To The Hospital

What she never imagined was that she — a doctor — would be stopped by police on her way to work, abused, assaulted, hauled into a police station, and then work a 12-hour-shift with bruises all over her body.

Protecting and restoring forests is then crucial for the planet

Soon, Earth may be blanketed by tens of thousands of satellites

At a time when having a safe home has never seemed so important

many Tibetans at Yarchen Gar, one of the world’s most important sites for Tibetan Buddhism, will be feeling deeply insecure. Last summer, many residents found themselves without homes after they were demolished by the Chinese government. 

At the time, Free Tibet’s work with satellite imagery once again laid bare China’s human rights abuses, and the blatant disregard for Tibet’s unique history and culture.

A huge area of Yarchen Gar was destroyed. Rumours and reports of demolitions and the forced removal of monks and nuns had been leaking out of Yarchen Gar for some time, but thanks to the Chinese authorities’ clampdown on movement and communication, these were previously hard to verify. These new images confirmed the truth, and revealed that around half of the site had been levelled.

Larung Gar, another important site for Tibetan Buddhism, was subject to mass demolitions and forced evictions between 2016-17. Figures show 4,828 people have been evicted and at least 4,725 buildings destroyed.

Lake Zabuye, once a pristine site, has been transformed into an enormous lithium mine. For years, China has been exploiting the environment in Tibet without the consent of the Tibetan people.

Jokhang Temple – dating from the 7th century and home to many important artefacts and manuscripts –  was engulfed by flame in February 2018. All mention of the fire was removed from social media by Chinese censors. However, satellite images revealed the true extent of fire damage

Fang Bin refused to leave his home so police blocked the exits and firefighters broke down his door

He is one of a growing number of people who have been detained and silenced over their coverage of the situation in Wuhan or their criticism of Beijing’s response to a crisis that has already killed more people than the 2003 SARS epidemic and infected over 40,000 people.

The harpsichordist Kenneth Gilbert has died

His pupils include Emmanuelle Haïm, Sébastien d’Hérin, Davitt Moroney, Ludger Rémy, Scott Ross, Jos Van Immerseel and Jory Vinikour.

How Niki de Saint Phalle’s Forward-Thinking Feminism Changed the Art World

When de Saint Phalle first aimed a rifle at a canvas with sacs of paint affixed to it in 1961, she was doing something innovative—effectively making painting a form of performance art. “Performance art did not yet exist, but this was a performance,” she later recalled.

Did Syrian Generals Watch A Chemical Attack On A Hospital?

a delegation of generals visited a command post in Hama and observed strikes on al Lataminah on the March 25, 2017, the same day of the chlorine attack on the hospital. This delegation included both General Ali Abdullah Ayoub and Brigadier Suheil al Hassan. The presence of Brigadier al-Hassan is of particular interest; he is the commander of the “Tiger Forces”, who have previously been linked with the use of helicopter-borne chlorine munitions.

History of Pandemics

Global trade is a double-edged sword

COVID-19 pandemic has already led to some countries restricting food exports, with the potential for shortages. But the risks of climate change causing shocks in food production are looming too.

Luis Sepúlveda dies of coronavirus

He dedicated one of his novels, Story of a dog named Leal, to the Mapuche people. One of his grandparents was a Mapuche. “The Mapuche people are constantly harassed. Their demands, which are quite fair, are answered with repression and the application of absurd anti-terrorism legislation, ”he pointed out at the presentation of the novel in 2016.

Agnes Pelton: Future

Chinese Doctor Disappears after Blowing the Whistle on Coronavirus Threat

Ai Fen, the head of emergency at Wuhan Central Hospital, was given a warning after she disseminated information about the coronavirus to several other doctors. She recounted the reprimand in an essay titled, “The one who supplied the whistle,” which was published in China’s People (Renwu) magazine. The article has since been removed.


An Australian student is facing expulsion by the University of Queensland after he publicly questioned the school's close relationship with China and was termed an "anti-China separatist" by a Chinese diplomat with close ties to the school.

Li Wenliang had posted to a group chat with other medics about some patients showing signs of a new Sars-like illness in early December, well before Chinese authorities admitted to the outbreak of a novel coronavirus. Police detained Li a few days later for “spreading false rumours” and forced him to sign a police document admitting that he had “seriously disrupted social order” and breached the law. Officers said eight people had been disciplined for spreading rumours in relation to the virus,

To build a woke AI, we'll first have to build a woke society

The trouble for AI developers is that automated systems reflect the humans that create them, including their biases, conscious or not. For example, a recent U.N. study found that almost 90 percent of men and women are biased against women.

Much of the work undertaken by artificial intelligence involves a training process known as machine learning, where AI gets better at a task such as recognising a cat or mapping a route the more it does it. Now that same technique is being use to create new AI systems, without any human intervention.

The holy grail — so-called general artificial intelligence that can flit between various jobs mimicking human behavior — is still more a myth than a reality, 

The other side of Dorothea Lange

Permanently ban wildlife consumption

COVID-19, caused by the coronavirus, is a zoonotic disease, meaning it originated from an animal. The source of the outbreak is believed to have been a "wet market" in Wuhan, China, that sold live and dead wildlife and domestic animals, along with other foods for human consumption. Such markets can be a living petri dish, with viruses shed by stressed animals warehoused together mixing with other bodily fluids in unhygienic conditions. When these often new or unknown viruses jump to people, the results can be catastrophic.

Although the origin of severe acute respiratory syndrome–coronavirus 2 (SARSCoV-2)—the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)—has not been identified, it is clear that China's wildlife market played an important role in the early spread of the disease

Among threatened wildlife species, those with population reductions owing to exploitation and loss of habitat shared more viruses with humans

Shi and her American collaborators have shown that in a laboratory environment bat coronaviruses can jump directly to humans.

LPO appoints Karina Canellakis as principal guest conductor

The era of the dictator conductor – the “maestro” – is long gone, she says. “The role of a conductor is much more collegial and collaborative than it used to be. You want to make music with the orchestra, not impose your concept of a piece on it.”

The mafia loves a crisis

effective responses may be limited by a lack of specific anti-mafia legislation in individual states and tax havens. In Germany, for example, there is no cash payment limit. Lack of awareness in countries such as the Netherlands has allowed some sectors, including horticulture, to be infiltrated by the ’Ndrangheta, which exploits it for money laundering and concealing shipments of drugs. Although Dutch authorities have since increased judicial cooperation with other countries, strong anti-mafia legislation is still missing.

Speranza Scappucci: opera is building

“The orchestra is as important as all of the singers on stage. The big mistake is to think that bel canto is all about the voice. It’s not true,” the conductor says emphatically.

“The rhythmic motivation and the colours, they come from the (orchestra) pit,” Scappucci adds.

China’s role ‘critical’ if world is to meet climate change targets

China is also accused of funding multibillion-dollar coal projects in emerging markets, financing more than a quarter of all coal-fired power plants outside its borders. For instance, an environmental tribunal cancelled a licence awarded to a consortium, which included Chinese companies, for the construction of a US$2 billion coal-powered plant in Lamu, a town on the Kenyan coast.

“Nobody believes China’s numbers”

Still, the worry, he says, is continued doubts over China’ numbers given its role as source of the pandemic even as it attempts to ramp up “mask diplomacy” by sending supplies to stricken countries overseas. “There’s a lot of concern about how this opacity inside China prevented greater international coordination and cooperation,”

Several of the loudest anti-WHO voices are hawkish on China, and they allege that WHO leaders have been too timid in holding Beijing accountable for being slow to detail the extent of the outbreak that began on Chinese soil.

Gemma New: my favorite piece is the one that I’ve got on my desk

“My favorite piece is the one that I’ve got on my desk that I’m studying at the moment. I obsess with it, I really learn every single nook and cranny about that piece and learn what all the gems are about it, what the best parts of the piece are and cherish that,”