Tibetan Chöd practice – cutting through the ego

The tantric practice of Chöd originated in India but was greatly developed in Tibet by the great female practitioner or yogini of the 11th century, Machig Labdrön. She originated a new lineage of the practice that is the only tantric Buddhist practice that was introduced back to India from Tibet.

Sedna’s origin posed somewhat of a mystery

even at its closest approach to the Sun, Sedna remains more than twice as far away from the Sun as Neptune. As a result, Sedna’s origin posed somewhat of a mystery. A body that never experienced direct interactions with Neptune could not have been placed on its orbit by Neptune alone.

Peter Alexander, Los Angeles Artist Known for Transcendent Sculptures, Has Died at 81

“Whether through resin sculpture or velvet painting, Alexander actively sought to capture light through environmental sensation.”

For the Dalai Lama, finding inner peace is as easy as deciding that whatever is bothering you simply doesn’t exist

meditation, His Holiness said, is not merely sitting there in “thoughtlessness,” but instead using our brains to concentrate on a particular subject or noise or destructive emotion (like anger) bothering us as a way to “reduce the intensity” of the emotion, and then let it go.

Richard Anuszkiewicz, the pioneering American Op Art painter who manipulated color and light to mesmerizing results, died on May 19

Éliane Radigue, born in Paris’ Les Halles district, in 1932

She soon converted to the religion, which has greatly influenced her work, particularly her masterpiece Trilogie de la Mort. L’Ile Re-sonante, from 2000, is her last electronic work before transitioning to works for acoustic instruments.

Free Tibet School Pack is an educational material designed for children interested in the world around them

What the mysterious symbols made by early humans can teach us about how we evolved

Fraud factories

OCCRP has seen no documentary evidence that the Tirana center employed the same techniques as the Kyiv one, or defrauded anyone. The insider did, however, tell OCCRP that the center’s operations were structured much like in Kyiv, with hundreds of young salespeople making up to 500 calls a day to clients around the world, trying to convince them to send money for investments that did not really exist. 

Before Yayoi Kusama Made ‘Infinity Rooms,’ She Created Standout Political Works

the recent Kusama craze has obscured what landed her in art history in the first place—namely, her boundary-pushing ’60s-era sculptures, performances, and photographs intended as reactions against a male-dominated world and expressions of her own psyche. During the time these works were made, they placed Kusama at the center of a new avant-garde emerging in New York, where she was based from 1958 to 1975.

“Immense pile of filth”

Francis denounced the “perverse” economic model that had allowed the wealthy to exploit the poor and turn the Earth into an “immense pile of filth.”

Controversial study shows rats prefer jazz to classical music (when on drugs...)

The research, which showed rats’ preference for jazz while under the influence of a certain substance, was criticised by animal rights groups.

11 of today’s best women conductors (including all the others that are missing in this list...)

Some of today’s greatest orchestral leaders are dynamic, inspiring and innovative women.

A country that illustrates how corruption also affects the developed world is Portugal

Between 2007 and 2014, 27 former Portuguese ministers happened to find themselves in comfortable positions on the boards of Angolan or Angolan-dominated companies. Over 100 others found their way to profitable positions within the Portuguese economy, backed by Angolan capital.

Three million masks of the FFP2 type were sold with an invalid certificate by the company Quilaban, belonging to the former president of the National Pharmacy Association (ANF), João Cordeiro. The buyer was the Directorate-General for Health (DGS), but the certificate for the masks sold is invalid, says the Sunday edition of the newspaper “Público”, stating that the company's general director, Sérgio Luciano, admitted problems with the respective certificate 

No other organization works quite like OCCRP

With 50 independent media member centers and more than 40 additional publishing partners around the world OCCRP global reach allows it to follow the money — and patterns of criminal behavior — across borders. 

Just last week, OCCRP exposed serious problems in the murky market for rapid COVID-19 antibody tests by collaborating with it's member centers and partners in Macedonia, Italy, Russia, Serbia, and Indonesia. 

To tackle these global stories that affect local audiences, OCCRP is leading the way in networked investigative journalism for the public good. Take “Fraud Factory,” another story we broke earlier this year, which exposed a multi-country network of call-center scammers who sold fake investments to vulnerable people in more than 20 countries, from the Arctic Circle to the Ecuadorian Amazon. Some of these victims lost everything.  

With it's member centers and publishing partners in Ukraine, Albania, Georgia, the Czech Republic, and Latin America, along with OCCRP expert in-house researchers and fact-checkers, OCCRP published stories in over a dozen media outlets. Swedish authorities opened an investigation into the group and were able to trace connections between the call center and government officials in Albania and Georgia.

It is these working relationships and the trust OCCRP have built with journalists all over the world that make it possible for it to work with people in so many different countries — collaborations that lead to increased impact and results.

If you believe in OCCRP mission, please join the fight for truth and justice and become an Accomplice today

In the hands of OCCRP team of trained researchers and journalists, information can make a difference. We call on you to help OCCRP by providing information on rigged tenders, frauds, scams, corruption, environmental disasters and abuses of power. If your tips and data could change the status quo, or even save lives, OCCRP wants to hear about it.

Last season, according to the accounting firm Deloitte, European soccer had revenues of twenty-eight billion dollars

Unlike American sports, with their draft picks, salary caps, and collective-bargaining agreements, European soccer is a heedless, Darwinian affair. Spending rules are broken. Salaries are secrets. The best leagues are awash in Russian oligarchs, Middle Eastern sovereign-wealth funds, and Chinese conglomerates

Portugal's Missing Valentina: body found. Father and stepmother arrested

it’s understood that ... (*) will have driven his daughter’s body to the place roughly 5 kms away where it was found, ‘covered by bits of shrubbery’. 

(*) monsters doesn't deserve to be named.

[Last year, another child, Lara, was murdered in similar circumstances as Valentina (as far I know, and I did not follow that case, without physical torture). Teenager Rui Pedro disappeared many years ago and portuguese justice system was unable to effectively manage a strong case against the main suspect, letting it to be displayed as the "perfect crime". There's many monstrosities that we didn't notice, like this one. Many blatant murders occurred recently in Portugal commited by relatively young people. The maximum penalty in Portugal is only 25 years in jail and the monsters, when they get it, often walk free several years before serving the full time. Child abuse, terrorism and domestic violence, are "mainstream" in Portugal, who had many tenebrous "histories". Even a king was abused!

"25-year-old psychology graduate Rúben Couto confessed that he killed talented musician Beatriz Lebre in a fit of jealous rage, explain reports, throwing her body afterwards into the Tejo river."

Even outside the country, the monsters are committing their monstrosities.

The mob that killed Luís Giovani are no more than a horrific collection of monsters]

Bats Are Important

Many of the more than 1,390 bat species consume vast amounts of insects, including some of the most damaging agricultural pests. Others pollinate many valuable plants, ensuring the production of fruits that support local economies, as well as diverse animal populations. Fruit-eating bats in the tropics disperse seeds that are critical to restoring cleared or damaged rainforests. 

Will Coronavirus Forever Change the Chemical Compositions of Artworks?

The Bedroom (1889), an image of self-isolation that feels relatable in this age of coronavirus. Van Gogh painted the work while he was recovering from nervous exhaustion in Arles, but the artwork’s relationship to sickness doesn’t end there

"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,” 

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