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.

Ionisation

1 + -1 = 0

Since matter and antimatter are characterized by opposite properties, they will annihilate each other when they meet.

Endunga

The Tibetan calendar ( ལོ་ཐོ )

is a lunisolar calendar. This means that the Tibetan year is composed of either 12 or 13 lunar months, each beginning and ending with a new moon. A thirteenth month is added every two or three years so that an average Tibetan year is equal to the solar year.

Chemical reactions between the glacial sediment and the air remove CO₂ from the atmosphere

We often talk about things moving at a glacial pace if they are slow, but actually glaciers can be relatively fast. Some, such as Meserve Glacier in Antarctica, will barely move at all each year, but others, like Jakobshavn Isbrae in Greenland, will move as much as 40m a day

Mariss Jansons renowned for performances of Mahler, Strauss and the Russian romantics

Mariss Jansons, who has died aged 76 after suffering from a long-term heart condition, would feature very near the top. Indeed, in the first decades of this century he was frequently awarded the accolade of greatest living conductor.

How Africa’s Richest Woman Exploited Family Ties, Shell Companies And Inside Deals To Build An Empire

Two decades of unscrupulous deals that made Isabel dos Santos Africa’s wealthiest woman and left oil and diamond-rich Angola one of the poorest countries on Earth

Her father was president of Angola, a country wracked by poverty and civil war, for 38 years (1979 to 2017), and his administration was widely held to be corrupt. In 2013, Angola ranked near the bottom of a corruption index published by Transparency International

The hacker, Rui Pinto, handed over a hard drive "containing all data related to the recent revelations concerning Ms Isabel Dos Santos’s fortune" to a whistleblowing organisation in 2018, his lawyers said.

The records and articles also show how a plethora of financial firms, lawyers, accountants and government officials worldwide have stepped up to enable the schemes

Prosecutors say that they are tracing money allegedly moved out of the country by the dos Santos family and associates and that they are collaborating with the U.S., U.K., Switzerland, Brazil, Portugal and Congo. 

The index, which ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and businesspeople, uses a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean. More than two-thirds of countries score below 50 on this year’s CPI, with an average score of just 43. It reveals that the continued failure of most countries to significantly control corruption is contributing to a crisis in democracy around the world.

Corruption Rank

Iran’s Deadly Puppet Master and the massacre of innocents

His brilliance, effectiveness, and commitment to his country have been revered by his allies and denounced by his critics in equal measure. What all seem to agree on, however, is that the humble leader’s steady hand has helped guide Iranian foreign policy for decades—and there is no denying his successes on the battlefield. Suleimani is arguably the most powerful and unconstrained actor in the Middle East today. U.S. defense officials have reported that Suleimani is running the Syrian civil war (via Iran’s local proxies) all on his own.

Suleimani has a long history of attacking U.S. service members and is responsible for the deaths of at least 600 Americans in Iraq alone, current and former officials say. O’Brien on Friday also cited Suleimani’s support for President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime in Syria and violent repressing of recent protests in Iran.

The downing of Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 on Wednesday came just hours after Iran carried out missile strikes on two airbases housing US forces in Iraq. The strikes were a response to the killing of senior Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Baghdad on 3 January.

Le Déjeuner Sur l’Herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires

Kingdom of Evil

Abdulaziz has claimed in a lawsuit that his communications were probably intercepted by Saudi Arabia – an allegation the kingdom has denied. But Abdulaziz fears his messages to Khashoggi could have given insights to the people who would later kill him.

"Prince Mohammed is emboldened - he has already ousted any threats to his rise, and jailed or murdered critics of his regime without any repercussion,"

The young prince silenced debates inside the kingdom and pursued his critics abroad. The brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was the final stroke in shattering his international reputation, while his decision to pursue a disastrous war in Yemen has embarrassed his western allies, which continue to sell arms to Saudi Arabia.

But his propaganda abroad and deployment of thinktanks that promote his interests abroad and launder his reputation among a western political elite, ensured that he remained the preferred candidate of Donald 

China is world’s leading jailor of journalists

“For the fourth consecutive year, at least 250 journalists are imprisoned globally as authoritarians like Xi Jinping, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Mohammed bin Salman, and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi show no signs of letting up on the critical media,” the report read.

The Drums of Cyberwar

Georgia was hit with a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack that took down media outlets and military command centers. With the government struggling to communicate with its citizens and the outside world, Russia commandeered the airwaves, broadcasting its own version of events. The hackers themselves were freelancers, recruited from social media sites, which gave Russia plausible deniability, making retaliation that much harder. When Russian troops invaded the country about a month later, the hackers had prepared the battleground. It was the first time cyberwarfare was used to initiate an armed conflict,

Amnesty says more than 300 killed in Iran protest crackdown

At least 304 people were killed and thousands more injured during a three-day crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran in mid-November, Amnesty International said Monday.

Tibet has a history dating back over 2,000 years

A good starting point in analyzing the country's status is the period referred to as Tibet's "imperial age," when the entire country was first united under one ruler. There is no serious dispute over the existence of Tibet as an independent state during this period. Even China's own historical records and the treaties Tibet and China concluded during that period refer to Tibet as a strong state with whom China was forced to deal on a footing of equality.

'It Has Been the Same Shit for Years'

Rui Pinto, the face of Football Leaks, has spent the last nine months in prison. For the first time, he is now speaking out about the 147 charges against him and his time spent in pre-trial detention.

Huawei, whose name can be translated as “China is able”, is one of the country’s most important success stories

the five arrests show the extent of Huawei’s “relationships with the government, the police and the courts”. “In China, all three can be manipulated. As long as Huawei says this person has done something, the police will arrest them.”

Christina Ramberg: Hair Candy #2 (1972–73)

Sea of Shadows

When Mexican drug cartels and Chinese traffickers join forces to poach the rare totoaba fish in the Sea of Cortez, their deadly methods threaten to destroy virtually all marine life in the region, including the most elusive and endangered whale species on Earth, the vaquita porpoise.

For the first time in its 150-year history the Vienna State Opera is staging an opera by a woman

Olga Neuwirth says "it feels a little bit strange" to be the first female composer to have a work staged at the Vienna State Opera.

Coronal Features

Jailed physicist released following corruption protest

A Croatian theoretical physicist has been released from prison after he was jailed in August following a two-month sit-in at the science ministry in Zagreb.

Family members and close associates of Mihajlo Perenčević, a wealthy Croatian businessman with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, received millions of dollars from Russia under the guise of fictitious real estate purchases.

“Al-Bab, the Nightmare” / “Jarablus, the Nightmare”

Rape is a crime of war that Syrian rebel groups have largely refrained from committing, but reports of rapes perpetrated by SNA fighters circulate among local Kurds and Kurdish media outlets. Disturbingly, two SNA members, Qassem and Mohsin, confirmed to me the incidence of such cases and could name specific Kurdish and Yazidi women they know who were raped by SNA fighters in Efrîn.

Two more Tibetans arrested from Zachukha for demanding Tibet’s independence

Zaha Hadid Architects Designs Futuristic Transit Hub That Doubles as a Public Bridge

Conductor Mariss Jansons dies aged 76

Born in Rīga into the musical family of conductor Arvīds Jansons and singer Iraīda Jansone, Mariss moved to what was then Leningrad in 1956 with his parents, where his father worked as a conductor at the Leningrad Philharmonic. Mariss Jansons studied violin, piano and conducting at the Leningrad Conservatory. 

Every 20 minutes, there is a rape in India

"[Indian] judiciary is interested in regulating women's sexuality and judging them rather than offering them justice," 

Central Tibetan Administration “Tibetans ‘minoritized’ by China face imposition of Mandarin”

“Tibetans are deprived of learning their own language on their own land; Tibetans are deprived of teaching their own language on their own land- if this is not human rights violations then what is.”

440 High Heels Installed on Giant Wall to Honor Female Victims of Domestic Violence

Domestic violence is the crime that causes the highest number of deaths in Portugal

Domestic violence is the crime against people that causes the highest number of deaths in Portugal. It is widely known that the vast majority of domestic violence victims are women,

Four girls are raped every hour in Brazil

In Brazil, four girls under 13 are raped every hour and every two minutes police receive a report of violence against women

What is domestic violence and abuse?

When people think of domestic abuse, they often focus on domestic violence. But domestic abuse includes any attempt by one person in an intimate relationship or marriage to dominate and control the other. 

Women’s Business

When Moaveni asks her subjects why they went to Syria despite reports of cruel punishments and repression of women, they say they didn’t believe what they heard. Nour, the Tunisian, provides some of the most detailed testimony. Suspended from school for wearing a hijab, she is drawn to an extremist mosque and becomes close to young men who seem to respect her and who provide her with a theological justification for ISIS ideology. When the Islamist political party she favors is banned, the obvious answer is to go to Syria, where she and her husband hope they can live by their religious beliefs. To her, “the crucifixions and sex slave markets were the fanciful propaganda of the group’s opponents.” According to Moaveni, Nour regarded the media as the tool of an oppressively secular Tunisian state, while Islamist women in the West filtered out information from news sources that they saw as anti-Muslim—in other words, most media. Like those Americans who discount everything from sources deemed “fake news,” they simply dismissed information that contradicted what they wanted to believe.

Deliberate policy to injure protesters points to responsibility of those in command

The intention of the Chilean security forces is clear: to injure demonstrators in order to discourage protest, even to the extent of using torture and sexual violence against protesters.

The Universe Is Made of Tiny Bubbles Containing Mini-Universes

Vija Celmins: ‘I Just Look, and Paint’

Celmins offers artworks with no focal point, no hierarchy, no instruction about this bit being more important than that bit.

Daphne murder: 17 Black owner Yorgen Fenech arrested

17 Black was identified in a leaked e-mail as one of two sources of income for the Panama companies Hearnville and Tillgate, which were set up by Office of the Prime Minister consultants Nexia BT for Minister Konrad Mizzi and the Prime Minister's chief of staff Keith Schembri.

Riccardo Chailly: a conductor should know all the forms of composition

I did study a course of composition in Perugia and then later in Milan – it’s unavoidable that a conductor should know all the forms of composition. But I always had a fascination with the sound of a symphony orchestra, since my youth because of the idea of the magic that can be produced by this enormous human instrument with so many different sources of sound.

There Is Growing Evidence that Our Universe Is a Giant Hologram

If this depiction of space is correct, then like any computer, there is an inherent limit to the universe’s data storage and processing capacity.

A Letter to Flower and Crown (Parwana Fayyaz)

with a hope that someone will help on the other side,
offering them shelter to rest for the night.
I first heard the story about the women fleeing
and losing their ways in crossing the valleys –

"A black sun rises in the West of me" (Toby Martinez de las Rivas)

city where the lamb lights hís terrible

mercy in to worldis of worldis, forever & ever

& hís government will never fail, for no glory

is allowed but hís glory, no bone

gouvernance but hís bone gouvernance,

no prison camp but hís prison camp,

hís plantations, hís will & techne, hís punishment

beatings, hís censorship, hís textual criticism,

Why Space Radiation Matters

White Phosphorous Use in Northern Syria

The Times of London implied that the OPCW chose not to investigate the use of White Phosphorus (WP) due to political expediency: “The suspicion is that the OPCW’s reluctance to investigate reflects western hesitancy to embarrass a Nato member at a time when relations with Turkey are strained.” 

Lisbon Web Summit shocks with €850 sweater and €780 jumper

People are confused as to why Web Summit, an annual technology conference in Lisbon, is charging hundreds of euros for its clothing.

Scientists create 'artificial leaf' that turns carbon dioxide into fuel

Scientists have created an “artificial leaf” to fight climate change by inexpensively converting harmful carbon dioxide (CO2) into a useful alternative fuel.

Poorly planned Amazon dam project 'poses serious threat to life'

Environmentalists and scientists warned this would devastate one of the world’s most unique biodiversity hotspots. Economists questioned the viability of a scheme paid for with pension funds and tax revenues, but which is designed to run at only 40% of its 11,200MW capacity. Prosecutors involved in the Car Wash corruption investigation found Belo Monte contractors were paid inflated fees in return for kickbacks to political parties.

Ghost Gear

there is one particular type of plastic pollution that is especially deadly because it is specifically designed to catch and kill marine wildlife: Abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear, or so-called ‘ghost gear’.

Green Skull (Sherrie Levine)

“New paths for the Church and for the integral Ecology”

women do everything that the priest does, except consecration of the bread and wine. Why not allow them this mission as well?

Student makes history by writing thesis in the Incas’ language

Roxana Quispe Collantes received top marks from Lima’s San Marcos university, the oldest in the Americas, for her study on Peruvian and Latin American literature, which focused on poetry written in Quechua.

Scholars say it is the first time in the university’s 468-year history that a student has written and defended a thesis (answering questions from examiners) entirely in the native language – even though it is the most widely spoken indigenous tongue in South America, used by about 8 million people, half of them in Peru.