Nadia Boulanger

Boulanger’s family had been associated for two generations with the Paris Conservatory, where her father and first instructor, Ernest Boulanger, was a teacher of voice. She received her formal training there in 1897–1904, studying composition with Gabriel Fauré and organ with Charles-Marie Widor. She later taught composition at the conservatory and privately. She also published a few short works and in 1908 won second place in the Prix de Rome competition with her cantata La Sirène. She ceased composing, rating her works “useless,” after the death in 1918 of her talented sister Lili Boulanger

Barbara Rose, Impassioned Critic Who Reshaped Art History, Has Died at 84

“The only thing anybody knows about me is that I wrote that article with the title I didn’t give it, which was ‘ABC Art,’ and then everybody insisted that I invented Minimal art,” Rose told Artforum in 2016. “Well, that is seriously wrong. I don’t invent art movements. I just notice coincidences, and those coincidences began to make sense to me as a worldview, which the Germans call weltanschauung.”

A Comparison between Natives and Second-generation Immigrants in Switzerland (2013)

for the children of Portuguese, former-Yugoslav, Albanian, and Turkish immigrants, the socio-economic background plays a minor role in explaining the transitions into NEET. In this case, a disadvantage persists even after socio-economic background is taken into account in the model.

The Caspian Sea is set to fall by 9 metres or more this century

It means the lake will lose at least 25% of its former size, uncovering 93,000 sq km of dry land. If that new land were a country, it would be the size of Portugal.

The Dumbest Moments of the Trump Presidency

The president told the nation to inject bleach during a pandemic; his team altered the projected path of a hurricane on an official document, with a Sharpie, to help the president save face after an erroneous tweet

What happened after an explosion at a Russian disease research lab called VECTOR?

On September 16th, 2019, an explosion occurred at the State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology building (Vector) in the city of Koltsovo, in the Novosiberisk region of Siberia, Russia. The affected building was a BSL 4 virology research centre, and one of only two known sites housing variola virus, the cause of smallpox. The facility has one of the largest collections of dangerous pathogens in the world. Whilst laboratory safety breaches are common and do not usually result in epidemics, explosions are rare. Unlike a needlestick injury or an accidental shipping of live anthrax, an explosion of this magnitude is likely to lead to a physical breach of the integrity of the laboratory, possibly affecting multiple parts of the structure and equipment within. An explosion is sudden, uncontrolled and unpredictable, and involves force which may result in pathogen release into the surrounding environment. An epidemic which arises in close proximity to the explosion could spread beyond the affected region or even globally, which makes this event a concern for global public health.

US Congress passes bill to support Tibet

US lawmakers have approved legislation that may lead to sanctioning China if it interferes in the Tibetan people's process of choosing a successor to their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

Over 500 animals slaughtered

Over 500 animals have been slaughtered in a walled estate in Azambuja purportedly making way for a massive solar energy park. Uproar began over social media last weekend after photographs of ‘the massacre’ were uploaded by some of the Spanish hunters who had taken part.

Great Conjunction 2020 (December 21)

The last closest Great Conjunction we could see occurred in 1226

Stop fake green!

The burning of trees and crops for energy, factory animal farming, polluting cargo and cruise liners significantly damage our planet and people’s health, and should not be featured in the list of ‘green’ activities to receive EU money.

Sanam Khatibi’s Paintings Envision a Fantastical World of Skulls, Poisons, and More

Sanam Khatibi’s painstakingly detailed paintings come in many forms, from small-scale still lifes that reflect Dutch Golden Age styles to larger canvases with nude figures in forestial settings. Binding them all is an interest in rituals and mysteries of the natural world.

"People have an easier time blaming the victim"

So-called revenge pornography, which is a type of image-based sexual abuse, has been a criminal offence in England and Wales since 2015. The law defines it as "the sharing of private, sexual materials, either photos or videos, of another person, without their consent and with the purpose of causing embarrassment or distress". It is punishable by up to two years' imprisonment. However platforms that share this content have not been held accountable so far.

Clean meat

Singapore has given regulatory approval for the world’s first “clean meat” that does not come from slaughtered animals.

Ukrainian citizen was victim of torture at Lisbon airport

The national director ... admitted that the Ukrainian citizen killed at Lisbon airport, Ihor Homenyuk, was a victim of torture.

“Say Our Names”

Among the most striking and widely shared murals was one painted in Minneapolis by artists Xena Goldman, Cadex Herrera, and Greta McLain, along with a crew of collaborators drawn from the community. In the painting, Floyd is framed by names of Black Americans, including Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, and Breonna Taylor, who have been killed by police over the last decade. Above Floyd’s head is a simple phrase eponymous with the movement: “Say Our Names.”

#HumanRightsDay 2020

There were many bright spots, from the caretakers and essential workers globally persevering during this pandemic, to the protesters who were inspired to march by the murder of George Floyd. From the people in Lebanon who came together to help each other after a horrible, preventable explosion, to the brave peaceful protesters in Belarus demanding free and fair elections. But not every heartening story made the headlines, and many heroes are unsung.

Michigan secretary of state says armed protesters gathered outside her home

Dozens of armed people gathered outside Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson's home over the weekend "shouting obscenities" and threatening violence in an effort to overturn the presidential election results in the state, she said Sunday.

Agnes Chow: Hong Kong’s 'real Mulan' fighting for democracy

Ms Chow has not been charged yet. For now, she is in custody awaiting sentencing this week on separate charges of unauthorised assembly related to last year's protests, to which she has pleaded guilty. And although she is no stranger to being arrested, she says things have become much more ominous in recent times. She describes how her house was surrounded for an entire day by plainclothes police in August, before they banged on her door many hours later. An infrared camera had also been installed on a nearby hill.

Who knew that ancient Amazonians bungee jumped?

Archaeologists recently discovered eight miles of painted rock face in the Colombian Amazon, sited along the Guayabero River. The Colombian and English researchers studying the works suspect that there could be upward of 100,000 individual paintings on 17 walls, dating from the time when humans first arrived in South America and then traveled through Central America. The thousands of paintings, made by people who lived there 12,500 years ago, have captivated viewers the world over. Now, Artnet News has obtained more photographs of the giant sloths, armadillos the size of a car, and countless other animals, as well as humans dancing, engaging in ceremonies, and even bungee jumping.

Trump backers, including Flynn, edge toward a call to 'suspend' Constitution

Even as prominent Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, began to grudgingly acknowledge that Joe Biden will be the next president, a noisy grassroots movement devoted to keeping Donald Trump in office seemed to be edging closer to advocating seizing power in what would amount to a coup d’état.

Plastic bottles dumped in rivers can travel thousands of kilometres

The team released the bottles along the Ganges river in India and Bangladesh, which is the second largest contributing river to ocean plastic pollution. They found that the average bottle travelled at speeds of about 1 kilometre a day. Some ended up in the Bay of Bengal and travelled an average of 6 kilometres a day at sea.

France: 76 mosques face closure, 66 migrants deported

The Grand Mosque of Pantin, in a low-income suburb on the capital’s northeastern outskirts, had shared a video on its Facebook page before the attack that vented hatred against Paty, who was beheaded in broad daylight near his school.

Brazil's Amazon: Deforestation 'surges to 12-year high'

The rainforest lost 11,088km2 of its vegetation between August 2019 and July 2020, marking an increase of 9.5% from previous 12 months, Inpe's data shows.

Belarus: a terrorist State

The experts also received reports of violence against women and children, including sexual abuse and rape with rubber batons, and said: “The State must do everything in its power to prevent, investigate and punish any form of abuse, including violence against women, whether those acts are perpetrated by the State or by other actors.” Among some 6,700 people detained in recent weeks while exercising their right to freedom of peaceful assembly are journalists and passers-by who were arbitrarily arrested and hastily sentenced.

The Belarusian protests: feminized, but feminist?

The overt violence seen today was being committed before, but behind closed doors. Now that the violence is out in the open it will be harder to ignore; the hope is that this will inspire a national conversation about domestic violence. Dzesiatava draws parallels between an abusive domestic relationship and that of the regime and the Belarusian people. Bias noted the same thing, adding that “the most dangerous moment for someone in an abusive relationship is when they decide to leave”

Belarus’s protests are fueled by an unprecedented civil society movement

People have united in the face of blatant injustice. But why was it this particular election that proved to be the tipping point? “Now it’s different. Belarusians made a sharp leap thanks to the generational change,” says Minsk-based sociologist Alena Artsiomenka. “People who grew up in the post-Perestroika era are more inclined to contribute to the society’s well-being. Those who were brought up in more stable and safe conditions are more interested in post-materialistic values.”

More than 200 arrested in renewed Belarus protests

Thousands of people took to the streets on Friday for the funeral of 31-year-old anti-government protester Roman Bondarenko, who died in hospital earlier this month following what demonstrators said was a severe beating by security forces.

Marriage Disproportionally Benefits Men

Marriage benefits men more than it does women. Married men are happier and healthier than their unmarried counterparts, their careers also benefit, and married men are more likely than unmarried men to be in the top 1% of earners. On the other hand, women’s health doesn’t improve significally with marriage. In fact, women’s health is much more tied to the quality of the marriage. While even bad marriages seem to benefit men, women’s health suffers a bigger impact than men’s if the marriage is bad.

The total number of living languages in the world cannot be known precisely

That number changes as knowledge of the world’s languages improves. This edition lists a total of 7,117 living languages worldwide—a net increase of 6 living languages since the 22nd edition of Ethnologue was published 

Music has the capacity to elicit strong positive feelings in humans by activating the brain’s reward system

we identified two specific patterns of chills: a decreased theta activity in the right central region, which could reflect supplementary motor area activation during chills and may be related to rhythmic anticipation processing, and a decreased theta activity in the right temporal region, which may be related to musical appreciation and could reflect the right superior temporal gyrus activity. The alpha frontal/prefrontal asymmetry did not reflect the felt emotional pleasure, but the increased frontal beta to alpha ratio (measure of arousal) corresponded to increased emotional ratings. 

One end-of-life study suggests the brain still registers the last sounds a person will ever hear

Traveling into the ear, the vibrations we hear get converted into electrical signals. Then it’s off to the brain, where scientists are still unraveling what happens next.

One of the biggest thefts of public funds in Russia: a $230 million tax fraud revealed by Magnitsky, a Moscow accountant

In 2012, OCCRP, Novaya Gazeta, and Barron’s identified Prevezon Holdings as a beneficiary of money originating from one of the biggest thefts of public funds in Russia: a $230 million tax fraud revealed by Magnitsky, a Moscow accountant. Russian authorities turned the tables, accusing Magnitsky of the fraud he had exposed. He died in prison from suspected abuse and lack of medical treatment.

Berman was fired by Trump in June. He is the second high-profile prosecutor dealing with the Prevezon case to be removed by the Trump administration, following the 2017 firing of Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney who filed the money laundering case against Prevezon.

Lita Cabellut Creates Evocative Portraits Using Renaissance Fresco Techniques

The Spanish-born, Hague-based painter Lita Cabellut’s impassioned portraits sometimes depict cultural figures who have nestled their way into her imagination, like Frida Kahlo and Coco Chanel. Other times, the figures are strangers that Cabellut has encountered on the street. Over the decades, she’s captivated an international audience with her paintings and unique process, a contemporary variation of the fresco technique—meaning she must work quickly.

#LhamoAct

Just one day after Lhamo’s death, Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, told a U.N. conference on women that the “protection of women’s rights and interests must become a national commitment.” The Chinese internet seized on the speech. And soon, people were calling for stronger enforcement of the domestic violence law using the hashtag #LhamoAct. Within a day, the hashtag had been censored on Weibo, one of China’s most popular social media platforms. 

Ethiopia is spiralling out of control

Reports from the war front indicate a massacre of Amhara civilians. Reports from Addis Ababa and other towns tell of the mass round-up and internment of Tigrayans.

From Space to Sound

Elements of the image, like brightness and position, are assigned pitches and volumes. Each translation below begins on the left side of the image and moves to the right. No sound can travel in space, but sonifications provide a new way of experiencing and conceptualizing data. Sonifications allow the audience, including blind and visually impaired communities, to “listen” to astronomical images and explore their data.

The FinCEN Files

The FinCEN Files investigation is based on thousands of “suspicious activity reports” and other US government documents that BuzzFeed News has shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and more than 100 news organizations around the world. It offers an unprecedented view of global financial corruption, the banks enabling it, and the government agencies that fail to stop it.

Secretive high-end art world can be vehicle for dirty money

The United States Treasury Department is putting art galleries and museums on notice over the high risks of financial crime in their trade, warning that various aspects of the art industry makes “it attractive to those engaged in illicit financial activity, including sanctions evasion.”

Heller also advises Dasha Zhukova, the ex-wife of Putin-aligned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and a longtime friend of the Kushner-Trumps.

J.M.W. Turner, Radical Critic of the Anthropocene

When Turner draws the Houses of Parliament as they burned down in 1834, an event that was, to many contemporaries, a fitting fate for oligarchy and corruption, a seething crowd watches the Biblical light show. You imagine the cheers. Even a deadly pandemic may take a mythic shape. A ghastly skeleton collapses on its steed amid a hellish fog in a canvas of 1833 captioned The Fall of Anarchy.

Biden's Transition Team Is Stuffed With Amazon, Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb Personnel

The Biden-Harris team’s picks include executives at notoriously badly-behaving companies, such as Uber and Amazon. Crucially, some team members have worked to support gig companies’ assault on labor in recent years,

Biden and Harris speak in Delaware following election win

Harris, the first Black woman and first South Asian American woman to become vice president-elect, began her victory speech by quoting the late congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis, who said, “Democracy is not a state, it’s not an act.” “Protecting our democracy takes struggle, takes sacrifice,” she said. “But there’s joy in it.” She continued: “We the people have the power to build a better future. And when our very democracy was on the ballot in this election and the very soul of America was at stake and the world watching, you ushered in a new day for America.”

Partisan campaigners, rude poll workers, and armed police made voting uncomfortable for Indigenous voters. And yet, they helped the Democrats take the state.

Vienna islamist attack

the victims were an older man, an older woman, a young passerby and a waitress “Seven people are seriously injured and we’re dealing with bullet as well as stab wounds,” A spokeswoman for the health association said that in total 17 people were injured in the attack and they are being treated at several hospitals in the Austrian capital. the attacker who was shot dead by police was 20 years old and had north Macedonian roots, 

Kabul University islamist attack

an Islamic State-affiliated group of militants in Afghanistan killed at least 22 people during an assault on a Kabul University book fair, taking hostages and fighting gun battles with security forces for more than five hours.

Belarus: Detained protesters 'repeatedly beaten' and abused in post-election crackdown

Conditions for those stuck in Belarus' detention centres are reportedly appalling. One video verified by Euronews' social media newsdesk The Cube shows protesters held in a Minsk detention centre. Security guards can be seen roughly treating and occasionally beating prisoners.

Shooting of priest in Lyon shocks France as two more held over Nice killings

French police were hunting a gunman who shot and seriously injured a Greek Orthodox priest in the city of Lyon

A woman has been decapitated and two more killed in another islamic attack in France

the man had entered the city by train early on Thursday morning and made his way to the church, where he stabbed and killed the 55-year-old sexton and beheaded a 60-year-old woman.

has been named as Brahim... a 21-year-old Tunisian migrant... arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa in late September, when authorities placed him in coronavirus quarantine before releasing him with an order to leave Italian territory. He arrived in France in early October,

One of the three victims has been named by Brazil’s foreign ministry as Simone Barreto Silva, a 44-year-old woman who worked as a carer for the elderly.

the perpetrator had shouted the Arabic phrase “Allahu Akbar”... “Thirteen days after Samuel Paty, our country can no longer be content with the laws of peacetime to counter Islamo-fascism.”

A major attack was carried out by a Tunisian man on Bastille Day in Nice in 2016. He drove a truck into a crowd, killing 86 people.

The Redemption of Vanity

Anyone familiar with Strebe’s work and her interest in both science and philosophy will not be entirely surprised at this innovative new presentation. Her previous work, called Sugababe, was also a multi-year undertaking. It involved creating a living replica of the ear of Vincent van Gogh, grown from tissue-engineered cartilage, using cells from a male descendant that she says contained natural genetic information about the artist, and mitochondria from a female descendant of the artist’s mother.

Beethoven: String Quartet No.15 in A minor op. 132

Assai sostenuto - Allegro Allegro ma non tanto Molto adagio Alla marcia Allegro appassionato

Esmé Quartet

As we can realise European and islamic cultures are absolutely and definitely incompatible

The 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, headquartered in Saudi Arabia, on Friday condemned the “ongoing practice of running satirical caricatures depicting the Prophet Muhammad” and “will continue to decry justification for blasphemy of any religion in the name of freedom of expression.”

Xenakis: Jonchaies

Xenakis magnifies and extrapolates each textural idea until the aural surface of Jonchaies is a teeming collage of exaggerated sounds and timbres.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Adapting one of the most groundbreaking and powerful books of our time, Capital in the 21st Century is an eye-opening journey through wealth and power, that breaks the popular assumption that the accumulation of capital runs hand in hand with social progress, shining a new light on the world around us and its growing inequalities. Traveling through time from the French Revolution and other huge global shifts, to world wars and through to the rise of new technologies today, the film assembles accessible pop-culture references coupled with interviews of some of the world's most influential experts delivering an insightful and empowering journey through the past and into our future. Studiocanal

15 BILLION trees are chopped down every year -- 476 every single second

That's our rainforests, jungles, and woodlands being decimated to make space for ever more cattle, palm oil, and soybeans. But today we have a unique opportunity to change it. Right now the EU is considering a new law to ban any products linked to deforestation. If the law passes, the EU is such a massive market that it could force the world's biggest companies to change, transforming the global supply chain, and helping to save our woodlands, wetlands, and mangroves. 

Jail bankers who allow money laundering

should Democrats win back the Senate next month, he would use his new position as committee chairman next year to scrutinize the lack of prosecutions and those banks that blatantly allow dirty money to flow through the institutions.

Francebeheading: weapons not tears!

The government is under pressure, with one senior opposition figure criticising Mr Macron's approach and calling for "armes et non des larmes" - weapons not tears.

Beethoven's Quartet Nr.10

Ludwig van Beethoven: String quartet Nr.10 Eb major Op. 74

"The Harp"

1. Poco Adagio – Allegro 2. Adagio ma non troppo 3. Presto – Più presto quasi prestissimo 4. Allegretto con variazioni Danish String Quartet

Samuel Paty: a teacher at 'the very heart' of his profession

The father of the family, in his forties, was known for his commitment to his students. "He was very committed to his job," which he "loved very much," says Martial. "He really wanted to teach us things. From time to time, we would have debates, we would talk.”

A chechen refugee decapitated a teacher in Paris

The main suspect is alleged to be an 18-year-old born in Moscow and originating from Russia's southern region of Chechnya, the source said. The detainees reportedly include the parents of a pupil at the school where the murdered teacher was working.

Beethoven: Kreutzer Sonata

Patricia Kopatchinskaja & Fazıl Say

Mozart: Concerto for piano and Orchestra K.466

Camerata Salzburg

Mitsuko Uchida, Piano & Conductor

Olga Neuwirth: Clinamen/Nodus

London Symphony Orchestra

Pierre Boulez

Bach: Musical Offering in C minor, BWV 1079

Barthold Kuijken - transverse flute

Sigiswald Kuijken - violin

Wieland Kuijken - viola da gamba

Robert Kohnen - harpsichord

Silvius Leopold Weiss: Lute Sonatas

Robert Barto, lute

Louise Glück wins the 2020 Nobel prize in literature

After enduring almost three years of scandal, observers had predicted the Swedish Academy would go for a safe choice this year, with Canadian poet Anne Carson, Antiguan-American writer Jamaica Kincaid, Chinese novelist Yan Lianke, Russian novelist Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Japanese bestseller Haruki Murakami and perennial contender Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, the Kenyan novelist, poet and playwright, named as possible winners. Of the 116 previous Nobel literature laureates, 15 were women, and the last black African writer was Wole Soyinka in 1986.

Russian journalist dies after setting herself on fire

A Russian journalist died on Friday after setting herself on fire in front of the local branch of the interior ministry in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, a day after her apartment was searched by police, her news outlet said. Prior to her self-immolation, Irina Slavina wrote on her Facebook page: “I ask you to blame the Russian Federation for my death.”

Amazon near tipping point of switching from rainforest to savannah

Much of the Amazon could be on the verge of losing its distinct nature and switching from a closed canopy rainforest to an open savannah with far fewer trees as a result of the climate crisis, researchers have warned.

Bach: French Suites

The title is misleading: the English Suites are more ‘French’ in character than the French Suites, which are more characteristic of the Italian style. ‘By design the composer is here less learned than in his other suites,’ remarked one early biographer, ‘and has mostly used a pleasing, more predominant melody.’ Just so, and the same is true of the pair of suites BWV 818 and 819 which fall outside the collection but belong with it in terms of style. To all of them Yuan Sheng brings considered tempi and precise articulation in the mould of Tureck. To Bach at his most uncomplicated, Sheng brings the virtues of simplicity and clarity

Unsuk Chin: sheng concerto《SU》

Conductor: Myung-Whun Chung

Sheng Solist: Wu Wei

Radio France Ochestra

Leonin: "Viderunt Omnes"

Leonin (fl. 1150s — d. ? 1201): Organum Duplum for Christmas Day

Stockhausen: Gesang der Jünglinge

Gesang der Jünglinge, for tape (1955/1956)

Observing in Real Time the Making of a New System of Musical Notation

the first transcriptions of electroacoustic music weren’t made in response to a musical need, but rather to a juridic need: registering the works with organizations protecting intellectual property (the SACEM in France) that legally only recognized works by way of their written score. 

Laurie Spiegel - Drums (1975)

The extent of Spiegel’s venturesome spirit as a composer is further revealed on the reissue (of The Expanding Universe). In particular, her programming of pitched percussive accents on the polyrhythmic track “Drums,” as well as on the five-minute “Clockworks,”

Daphne Oram's 1960's Optical Synthesizer

Oramics Machine Electronic Music Pioneer 

The Delian Mode: Delia Derbyshire

The Delian Mode (Kara Blake, 2009) is a a short experimental documentary revolving around the life and work of electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire, best known for her groundbreaking sound treatment of the Doctor Who theme music. A collage of sound and image created in the spirit of Derbyshire’s unique approach to audio creation and manipulation, this film illuminates such soundscapes onscreen while paying tribute to a woman whose work has influenced electronic musicians for decades.

Eliane Radigue - IMA Portrait documentary

Her life journey has been remarkable. At the end of the fifties, she studied in Paris with musique concrète pioneers Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, whom she also assisted, notably for the premiere of L'Apocalypse de Jean. During the sixties she began composing with primitive electronics (feedback and asynchronous tape loops), but found little recognition for her research in France.

Clocks and Clouds

Ligeti's "Clocks and Clouds" is a relatively-short composition from 1972-1973 that takes its title from Karl Popper's 1966 philosophical essay "Of Clouds and Clocks". In this, Popper makes a compelling and easily-understood argument that scientific phenomena can be broken down into two main categories. The "clocks" are things that we can depend on such as, well, clocks. A clock can be easily measured, taken apart, and reconstructed. "Clouds", on the other hand, are things that we can only get a general, macroscopic view of -- things whose inner-workings we are unable to understand in a deterministic way.

How Galya Bisengalieva Mapped A Soviet Ecological Disaster with Her Violin

The sound summoned an infamous image from her native country, Kazakhstan, which was still part of the Soviet Union when she was born there in 1986. The mental image was of rusting and rotten ship hulls, desiccated atop the sand of a desert where one of the world’s great lakes, the Aral Sea, used to be.

“When I was growing up there, everyone knew about the disaster and what happened—there was water, and then there wasn’t. It was a human-made disaster, something we had done,” says Bisengalieva. “There was sadness.

The "New Artic"

Scientists often speak of a “new Arctic” to describe the region’s rapidly changing landscape. Temperatures are skyrocketing, sea ice is dwindling and many experts believe the far north is quickly transforming into something unrecognizable.

“Astronomers all over the world are looking for stellar-mass black holes”

says Julia Bodensteiner, PhD student at KU Leuven and lead author of the study. She continues: “They are predicted by our current understanding of stellar evolution and should thus be out there, but have so far mostly eluded detection.” 

September 11 Attacks

On September 11, 2001, 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al Qaeda hijacked four airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States. Two of the planes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane hit the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., and the fourth plane crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Almost 3,000 people were killed during the 9/11 terrorist attacks,

Hubble Discovery Hints at a Serious Problem With Our Understanding of Dark Matter

Dark matter is one of the biggest thorns in our understanding of the Universe. Simply put, we don't know what it is. It does not absorb, reflect, or emit any electromagnetic radiation, making it completely undetectable in a direct way. However, it does interact with the Universe's visible matter via gravity.

With a stalemate in Minsk, the next chapter of Belarusian history may be written in the Kremlin

Criminal charges, kidnappings, bags over the head and death threats: the Belarusian leader has deployed all the resources of his repressive apparatus this week in an attempt to suffocate the growing protest movement against his continued rule as he prepares for a crucial meeting with Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

Welcome to the Pyrocene Age

the areas burning, the areas needing to be burned, the off-site impacts with damaged watersheds and airsheds, the unraveling of biotas, the pervasive power of climate change, rising sea levels, a mass extinction, the disruption of human life and habitats – and you have a pyrogeography that looks eerily like an ice age for fire. You have a Pyrocene. The contours of such an epoch are already becoming visible through the smoke.

Time crystal

"Conceptually a time crystal is a very simple thing: It is a substance where the constituent particles are in constant, systematically repeating motion even in the absence of any external encouragement," 

Javier Ordóñez died following police use of tasers

Bogotá saw another wave of anti-police protests this Wednesday evening after Javier Ordóñez died following police use of tasers. The incident happened in the early hours of the morning, and anger grew throughout the day. With limited response from authorities, tensions at what began as a vigil outside the Villa Luz police CAI in Engativá boiled over into violent protest.

The lawyer and political activist Yamile Guerra, 42, was murdered in Floridablanca in the country’s Santander region on 20 July 2019

Paula Andrea Rosero Ordóñez, 47, was shot dead at close range by two hitmen, according to a police report. 

More than 400 Colombian lawyers have been murdered since 1991 but no one has been prosecuted for a single killing, a devastating report from 42 British lawyers who visited Colombia last year has revealed. 2009

Slovakia: the mastermind of the killings was cleared

Marian Kočner, once one of the most powerful people in the country, and his former lover were both cleared of ordering the killings during the hearing on September 3, at the culmination of one of the most high-profile trials in Slovakian history. Long a fixture in the local tabloids due to his extravagant wealth and rumored connections to organized crime, Kočner was only found guilty of one count of possessing ammunition, which he had already admitted. He was handed a 5,000-euro fine.

TXS 0128+554

is around 500 million light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia.  It's an active galactic nucleus (AGN), meaning it's a galaxy theoretically hosting a great big supermassive black hole in the middle. In this case the black hole – which is around a billion times the mass of the Sun - is hidden behind dust and gas in the 'cockpit' of the TIE Fighter.

Kapwani Kiwanga: Flowers for Africa

“I am a Third World artist”

says Doris Salcedo, “from that perspective—from the perspective of the victim, from the perspective of the defeated people—it’s where I’m looking at the world.”

Alondra de la Parra launches The Impossible Orchestra

Keen to play her part in supporting the women and children suffering abuse and hardship in her native Mexico – a situation greatly worsened during the pandemic – the conductor Alondra de la Parra has created The Impossible Orchestra.

Hollow denials exposed by the watchdog

When The Times first claimed in 2011 that a “culture of silence” had for years facilitated “the sexual exploitation of hundreds of young girls by criminal pimping gangs” in towns and cities across northern England and the Midlands, denial followed denial. We reported that most of the identified victims were white and most known offenders were of Pakistani heritage,

Evelyne Axell: Tiger Woman

The Greenland Ice Sheet is losing mass at accelerated rates in the 21st century

making it the largest single contributor to rising sea levels. Faster flow of outlet glaciers has substantially contributed to this loss, with the cause of speedup, and potential for future change,

The Amazon is burning: No to EU-MERCOSUR trade deal

The EU is about to sign a “new TTIP” with Mercosur -- aka Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. It is a deal to import cheap beef, soy, wood and other products grown from the Amazon’s ashes.

Russian opposition leader Navalny poisoned

Navalny, known for his anti-corruption campaigns against top officials and outspoken criticism of President Vladimir Putin, has suffered physical attacks in the past.

Lukashenko Doesn’t Want to Be Putin’s Deputy Tsar

No one anticipated such resounding success for the opposition and such failure for President Aleksandr Lukashenko in the presidential elections. The exact results are not known, but polling places that have reported undistorted results recorded 60 to 90 percent of the vote for the main opposition candidate, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, and no more than 17 percent for Lukashenko—more often around 10 percent.

Huge Garbage Patch Found in Atlantic Too

Akin to the Texas-size garbage patch in the Pacific, a massive trash vortex has formed from billion of bits of plastic congregating off North America's Atlantic coast

Do countries with female leaders truly fare better with Covid-19?

The analysis, which is now out as a working paper and has been submitted for consideration to a journal, found that the infection rate and death rate of Covid-19 were both lower in countries run by women compared to those in male-led countries. In an effort to isolate the specific effect of having a female leader, they compared female-led countries to male-led countries that are similar in population, geography, gender equality, health expenditures, and number of tourists. No matter how they sliced the data, female-led countries fared better.

COVID-19 will accelerate the arts’ ability to connect with audiences through technology

The pandemic strikes at the heart of why orchestras exist: to bring people together and build community through the power and emotion of live music. For many, that loss is an existential experience.

Tschabalala Self: Princess

Speculation on Black Artists Has Gotten So Intense That for Christie’s Latest Sale, Its Curator Is Asking Buyers to Sign a Special Contract

In February, a painting by Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo sold at Phillips in London for $881,432—more than 10 times its estimate and more than 3,000 percent what the seller had paid for it less than a year earlier. As usual, the artist did not see a penny from the transaction

Ex-cop’s video captures crowd’s horror during Floyd arrest

The video made available Thursday comes from fired Officer Tou Thao, one of four former Minneapolis police officers charged in the death of Floyd, a handcuffed Black man. Floyd died after a white officer, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck for nearly eight minutes on a south Minneapolis street May 25 as Floyd repeatedly said he could not breathe.

Picasso Y-Block Controversy

Viksjø and engineer Sverre Jystad designed the Y-Block using “Naturbetong”, or “natural concrete,” an experimental casting technique based on an aggregate of aluminum and silicon metal, which created a tactile surface receptive to sandblasting. Nesjar’s technique, called “Betograve,” entailed pouring concrete over a form—in this case, Picasso’s designs—tightly packed with gravel. The concrete was then sand-blasted with a high-pressure hose, exposing the gravel beneath. The final product was a singularity for the time and place: Brutalist architecture married with modernist figuration.

Uncovering Indonesia’s Act of Killing

1965-1966 Indonesian massacre, one of the worst, yet least known, mass killings since World War II, in which an estimated half a million Indonesians suspected of being Communists were murdered by soldiers and paramilitary death squads.

How ‘Jakarta’ Became the Codeword for US-Backed Mass Killing

Operação Jacarta. Yakarta Viene. Plan Yakarta. In both Spanish and Portuguese, in all three ways it was used, it’s clear what “Jakarta” meant: anticommunist mass murder and the state-organized extermination of civilians who opposed the construction of capitalist authoritarian regimes loyal to the United States. It meant forced disappearances and unrepentant state terror. And it would be employed far and wide in Latin America over the two decades that followed.

How 5 People Survived Nagasaki’s Nuclear Hell

Truman and the Secretary of War, made a concerted effort to publish articles justifying the use of the bombs, excluding any information about what happened to the people beneath the atomic clouds.

August 9, 1945

At 11:02 A.M., their morning was broken by a blinding white flash in the sky. The plutonium bomb dropped by the United States unleashed more than 21 kilotons of firepower, ripping through Nagasaki and killing as many as 70,000 people almost instantly. Ikeda was only one of 47 survivors from his elementary school; 1,400 students were killed, and 50 others were missing.

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

A mushroom cloud is seen over Nagasaki, Japan, after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city on August 9, 1945

Covid-19 lockdown will have 'negligible' impact on climate crisis

putting the huge sums of post-Covid-19 government funding into a green recovery and shunning fossil fuels will give the world a good chance of keeping the rise in global temperatures below 1.5C. The scientists said we are now at a “make or break” moment in keeping under the limit – as compared with pre-industrial levels – agreed by the world’s governments to avoid the worst effects of global heating.

Beirut explosion: death toll rises to 137 as army takes control of site

Lebanese officials have started blaming each other for leaving the highly explosive substance sitting so close to residential neighbourhoods for six years. The ammonium nitrate was taken from a ship that docked in Beirut in 2013 and was apparently abandoned by its Russian owner and mostly Ukrainian crew.

The attack on Hiroshima: Remembering the dead, praying for peace

Bells have tolled in Japan's Hiroshima for the 75th anniversary of the world's first atomic bombing, with ceremonies downsized due to the coronavirus pandemic and the city's mayor urging nations to reject self-centred nationalism and commit to nuclear disarmament more seriously

Is humanity doomed because we can’t plan for the long term?

the bizarre surge in panic buying and stockpiling of everything from food to toilet rolls. A second was the abject failure of most states to be prepared when experts had been warning governments for years that a pandemic would happen sooner or later. The third has been the exposure of the fragility of globalised supply chains. All three of these are underpinned by the same phenomenon: a strong tendency to prioritise the short term at the expense of the future.

What the End of the Universe Will Really Be Like

The explosion of Earth due to shredded spacetime certainly makes for a cinematically exciting scene. But if we are fated for a Big Rip, it is not likely to happen for about 200 billion years. That’s a lot sooner than the standard Heat Death scenario, but it is well beyond the lifespan of our solar system, Earth, and (probably) humanity.

Ur-Fascism

Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old “proletarians” are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority

བདེ་​བར་​གཤེགས་​པའི་​བསྟན་​པ་​ཐམས་​ཅད་​ཀྱི་​སྙིང་​པོ་​རིག་​པ་​འཛིན་​པའི་​སྡེ་​སྣོད་​རྡོ་​རྗེ་​ཐེག་​པ་​སྔ་​འགྱུར་​རྒྱུད་​འབུམ།

The Collected Tantras of the Ancients are organized with varying degrees of precision according to doxographical category. The three major rubrics under which the tantras of this collection are classified are Atiyoga, Anuyoga, and Mahāyoga. Each of these categories can be further divided into sub-categories, though the various editions differ as to whether they follow those sub-categories or not. This edition, the Degé, also contains a volume of supplemental tantric texts and a volume containing the index of titles by volume.

What Was the Most Influential Work of the Decade?

Where Should Art History Go in the Future?

The reorientation means that instead of gaining expertise about a legacy of specific masterworks, we instead have to take on a project that is less comfortable: constantly studying our own ignorance.

Chocolate: Child Labour and Deforestation

In 2001, the lucrative chocolate industry, due to pressure from NGOs, committed itself to putting an end to child labour in cacao plantations before 2006. 18 years later, has that promise been kept? The Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cacao producer, made a real effort to eradicate this scourge on the country. They built schools and trained farmers. Television adverts even reminded populations that child labour is illegal. So why does child exploitation still exist?

In the past half-century, few countries have lost rainforests as fast as the Ivory Coast. More than 80 percent of its forests are gone, most following an illegal invasion by as many as a million landless people into national parks and other supposedly protected forests. The Marahoue National Park alone has 30,000 illegal inhabitants. The invaders are growing cocoa to supply the global chocolate business.

A millennium ago

A millennium ago, Buddhist domination of Tibet spawned a new civilization, one in which the celebrated Lamaist religions of Bön and Buddhism came to hold sway. The inexorable march of time and the ascent of the new religious order slowly but surely clouded the memory of the earlier cultural heritage. As a result, many of the ancient achievements of the Upper Tibetan people were forgotten. All that remains are preserved in the impressive monumental traces of the region. Antiquities of Zhang Zhung attempts to reclaim these past glories by systematically describing the visible physical remains left by the ancient inhabitants of Upper Tibet.