Venice under water as complex dam system fails to activate

The network of water-filled caissons is designed to be raised within 30 minutes to create a barrier capable of resisting a water rise of three metres above normal.

By AFP News

December 9, 2020 

Venice's St Mark's Square was under water on Tuesday after a newly installed system of mobile artificial dams failed to activate.

Residents -- long accustomed to perennial "acqua alta" or high water events -- pulled on their rubber boots once more to deal with flooding that reached a high of 1.37 metres (4.5 feet) above sea level in the afternoon.

St Mark's Square is in the lowest area of Venice, lying just one metre above sea level 

Photo: AFP / ANDREA PATTARO

The waters drowned St Mark's Square -- the Renaissance city's lowest area at about one metre above sea level -- and invaded the famous basilica as many shopkeepers blocked their entrances with wood panels to keep the water out.

A massive flood defence system called MOSE aimed at protecting Venice's lagoon during high tide was finally installed in October.

The network of water-filled caissons is designed to be raised within 30 minutes to create a barrier capable of resisting a water rise of three metres above normal.

The waters flowed into St Mark's Basilica

 Photo: AFP / ANDREA PATTARO

But on Tuesday the system failed to swing into action because the forecast erroneously predicted a rise of only 1.2 metres (four feet) above sea level.

"To activate MOSE a bigger forecast is necessary," Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro told the Italian news agency Agi.

"We will have to review the rules of the command post."

The water reached a peak of 1.87 metres (six feet) above sea level on November 12, 2019, one of the highest ever recorded. Dozens of churches with UNESCO World Heritage status were damaged.

The MOSE infrastructure project began in 2003 but was plagued by cost overruns, corruption scandals and delays.

The project has cost about seven billion euros ($8 billion USD), versus an original estimate of two billion euros.

Once-in a-lifetime 'Christmas Star' to appear this month as Jupiter and Saturn align

The two planets will come together in a rare event that will make them appear as one

An image beamed back from the UAE's Hope Probe showing Saturn and Jupiter growing ever closer last month. Courtesy: Hope Probe / MBR Space Centre

Jupiter and Saturn will come into near alignment this month in a rare event that will make them appear as one, like a “Christmas star” in the night sky.

The planets’ orbits are pulling them closer and on December 21 they will appear to be just a tenth of a degree apart – about “the thickness of a dime held at arm's length,” Nasa said.

The event, called a “great conjunction,” takes place about every 20 years.

But their orbits have not aligned in the sky as closely as this since 1623, a few years after Galileo built his first telescope.

It will be right after sunset and you probably will have an hour or two at most to see them in the west of the sky
Thabet Al Qaissieh, Al Sadeem Observatory, Abu Dhabi

And that year, the two planets were just 13 degrees away from the Sun, making them almost impossible to view from Earth.

The last visible encounter when they were so close would have been in the Middle Ages, in the year 1226.

And they will not appear as near again until 2080, meaning few people alive today will ever witness it twice.

“You'd have to go all the way back to just before dawn on March 4, 1226, to see a closer alignment between these objects visible in the night sky,” Patrick Hartigan, an astronomer at Rice University, told Forbes.

“On the evening of closest approach on December 21, they will look like a double planet, separated by only 1/5th the diameter of the full moon.”

The planets may appear close on December 21, the day of the Winter Solstice, but they will still be separated by a distance of about 400 million miles.

Their apparent proximity comes from the fact their orbital paths will cross, making them appear to meet in Earth’s sky, said Thabet Al Qaissieh, who runs Al Sadeem Observatory in Al Wathba.

“It will be right after sunset and you probably will have an hour or two at most to see them in the west of the sky,” he told The National.

He said the planets would be visible with the naked eye, so there was no need to search for them using a telescope.

“They will appear like two very close stars from our perspective. It will look quite different.

“It will definitely be worth checking out.”

The Christmas Star is a key feature of the nativity story, which tells the tale of Jesus’ birth.

In the Biblical story, the Star of Bethlehem led three wise men to baby Jesus.

Astronomers have long suspected the star was the result of an astronomical event such as a supernova, or even a conjunction between Jupiter, Saturn and Mars.

More Everest: China, Nepal agree world’s tallest mountain is even higher

Mount Everest, known as Mount Qomolangma in Tibetan. 

(File photo: Reuters)

The Associated Press, Beijing

Tuesday 08 December 2020


China and Nepal have jointly announced a new height for Mount Everest, ending a discrepancy between the two nations.

The new official height is 8,848.86 meters (29,032 feet), China’s official Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday, slightly more than Nepal’s previous measurement and about four meters higher than China’s.

The new height was agreed on after the two counties sent surveyors from their respective sides of the mountain in 2019 and 2020.

There had been debate over the actual height of the peak and concern that it might have shrunk after a major earthquake in 2015.

Hurricanes are becoming more dangerous. Here’s why
A record-setting hurricane season just ended. Explore what we know, think we know, and are just learning about how climate change is influencing the world’s most dangerous storms.

By Brandon Miller, Drew Kann, Judson Jones, Renée Rigdon and Curt Merrill, CNN

Illustrations by Leanza Abucayan, CNN
Published December 3, 2020





Katrina. Maria. Andrew. Haiyan.

Hurricanes are the most violent storms on the planet. The names of the most damaging ones live on because of the devastation they left in their wake.

Known outside of North America as tropical cyclones or typhoons, hurricanes are essentially massive engines of wind and rain that are fueled by warm ocean water and air.

This heat energy is converted into lashing winds and driving rainfall that can bring devastating impacts when they hit cities, homes and infrastructure.

Over the last two-plus centuries, human activity — mainly the burning of fossil fuels – has added lots of heat to the oceans and air where these storms are spawned.

The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season was the most active on record, and many of the storms that slammed into the Gulf Coast, Central America and the Caribbean this year exhibited hallmark signs that they were supercharged by global warming.

In 1961, Hurricane Esther became the first storm to be recorded by a weather satellite. NASA

Though global temperature data goes back over 150 years, hurricane records are actually very sparse prior to the 1970s, when satellites first began capturing images of all of the world’s oceans.

While scientists are still learning exactly how this added heat is changing hurricanes, research shows that the storms are becoming more destructive in some key ways.

Here’s what scientists are most confident is happening to hurricanes as a result of climate change, what they think might be occurring and the biggest questions about how these massive storms are changing that remain unanswered.

LONG READ/INFOGRAPHICS HERE 

Teeth reveal details about a Neanderthal who fell down a well

By Katie Hunt, CNN
Wed December 2, 2020

Shown at left is the skull of Altamura Man, a Neanderthal who died in a cave in southern Italy at least 130,000 years ago. His skeleton is covered in calcite mineral deposits.

(CNN)Altamura Man is one of the most complete and best preserved Neanderthal skeletons ever discovered. His fossilized bones, however, have remained hidden from view at the bottom of a sinkhole near Altamura, a town in southern Italy.

That's where he fell and starved to death more than 130,000 years ago.

Cavers came face to face with his skull, covered in limestone deposits, for the first time in 1993. Frustratingly for scientists, though, its inaccessible location -- a 20-minute journey from the surface through narrow crevices -- has made study of the skeleton extremely difficult. The body remains lodged in a small chamber deep in the karst cave system.

"They used the rope to bring me down and many of my colleagues. For me, it was a totally amazing experience. When you get in that corner and you see the skeleton there, you're really blown away," said Jacopo Moggi-Cecchi, a professor in the department of biology at the University of Florence.

"This individual must have fallen down a shaft. Maybe he didn't see the hole in the ground. We think he sat there and died," said Moggi-Cecchi. "The original shaft he fell through is no longer there. It's been filled by sediment so we are confident the entire skeleton is there. No animals could have got there."

Neanderthal who fell into a well gives scientists oldest DNA sample

This new research, published in the journal PLOS on Wednesday by Moggi-Cecchi and his colleagues, is beginning to yield more information about the man.

Based on photos, videoscope footage and X-rays taken in the depth of cave, scientists have published an initial study of the man's jaw, including an almost complete set of teeth. They suggest that the man was of adult age, but not old, and he had also lost two teeth before he died.

"The tooth loss is something interesting. We have a large fossil record of Neanderthals, and it's not typical. In terms of oral health, they were in good shape," said Moggi-Cecchi.
The roots of some teeth were exposed, which could suggest gum disease was at play, he said. Some teeth in the lower jaw also had deposits of dental calculus -- calcified plaque that's familiar to dentists today.

Homo neanderthalensis walked the Earth for a period of about 350,000 years before they disappeared, living in what's now Europe and parts of Asia. They disappeared about 40,000 years ago -- although it's believed that they overlapped with Homo sapiens geographically for a period of more than 30,000 years after some humans migrated out of Africa.
Earlier research, published in 2016 based on DNA analysis of the man's shoulder bone, confirmed that the body was indeed Neanderthal and that he had lived between 130,000 to 172,000 years ago.

Accessing the Neanderthal skeleton is a 20-minute journey from the surface through narrow crevices.

Toothy grin and 'third hand'

Like other Neanderthals, this ancient man's front teeth are larger than those of modern humans -- but his molars are the same size as those of humans. Neanderthal jaws are broader, and they lack the protruding chin that's typical of modern humans.

Analysis of wear marks and calculus on other Neanderthal teeth has given us information about the Neanderthal diet and how they used their teeth for tasks other than eating.

Frozen moss reveals fatal final journey of 5,300-year-old ice mummy

Our archaic relatives used their front teeth almost as a "third hand" to hold meat while cutting it or to hold skins or leather for preparation, Moggi-Cecchi explained. Altamura Man had "marked wear" that might be related to this kind of activity.

For a more detailed analysis, however, Moggi-Cecchi said that it would be necessary to get the skull inside a lab as the teeth, like the rest of the skeleton, are covered in calcite -- mineral deposits from the limestone karst.

Shown here are researchers at the entrance to the cave system where the fossilized skeleton is located.

Scientists hope one day that the skeleton, or at least part of it, will be removed from the cave to allow in-depth study.

Ultimately, Moggi-Cecchi said the man could become a Neanderthal version of Otzi the Iceman -- whose 5,300-year-old frozen body was found by a couple hiking in the North Italian Alps in 1991. Otzi has become a window into early human history for scientists and tourists alike. Nearly every part of him has been analyzed, including what he may have sounded like, the contents in his stomach and how he died.

"The fact that we can get this kind of information simply by looking at the specimen in situ, imagine what the possibilities are if we can extract the specimen from the cave. "

MANSON IS DEAD LET HIS 'FAMILY' GO
California governor denies parole for Manson family member Leslie Van Houten for the fourth time


By Alaa Elassar, CNN
Mon November 30, 2020

Leslie Van Houten attends her parole hearing at the California Institution for Women in Corona, California in 2017.

(CNN)Leslie Van Houten, a Charles Manson follower convicted in a 1969 killing spree, was denied parole for a fourth time in four years on Friday.

The California parole board in January recommended parole for Van Houten. California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a parole release review obtained by CNN that he believes Van Houten "currently poses an unreasonable danger to society if released from prison at this time."

"Given the extreme nature of the crime in which she was involved, I do not believe she has sufficiently demonstrated that she has come to terms with the totality of the factors that led her to participate in the vicious Manson Family killings," Newsom wrote in his decision.

Manson family members and murder suspects Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkle, and Leslie van Houton.

Newsom added that despite Van Houten's productive time in prison -- she earned a bachelor's and master's degrees and completed "extensive" self-help programming -- the negative factors of her involvement in the murders outweighed the positive factors.

Van Houten, 71, is serving a life sentence at the California Institute for Women in Corona after being convicted for a pair of 1969 murders and conspiracy to kill five others.

She was 19 years old when she met Charles Manson and became part of his murderous cult that came to be called the "Manson Family," according to parole documents.

On August 10, 1969, she and other members of the Manson Family brutally stabbed Leno and Rosemary LaBianca to death at their home in Los Angeles. Van Houten was arrested November 25, 1969.

Little-known facts about the Manson murders

Van Houten was sentenced to death in 1971, but one year later the death penalty was overturned. Her first conviction was overturned, too, because her lawyer died before that trial ended. She was tried twice more -- one ending in a hung jury -- and was sentenced to life in prison following a 1978 guilty verdict.

Newsom said he understood Van Houten was 19 at the time of the crime and that a psychologist who evaluated her said it was likely her involvement in the killings were "significantly impacted" by youth factors, such as her impulsivity and the inability to manage her emotions

"Before she can be safely released, Ms. Van Houten must do more to develop her understanding of the factors that caused her to seek acceptance from such a negative, violent influence, and perpetrate extreme acts of wanton violence," Newsom said.

This is her 23rd appeal and the fourth time the board has deemed Van Houten suitable for release. Her three previous approvals for release were blocked twice by former Gov. Jerry Brown and once by Newsom.

Since 2016, Manson family members Charles Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Bobby Beausoleil and Bruce Davis have been denied bids for parole.

Manson died of natural causes in 2017. He was 83.

CNN's Artemis Moshtaghian, Amir Vera and Eliott McLaughlin contributed to this report.

The lone surrealist whose erotic art provokes to this day


Credit: Pierre Molinier/Courtesy Galerie Chrsitophe Gaillard, Paris

Updated 29th April 2020

Written by Martha Kirszenbaum

Martha Kirszenbaum is a curator and writer. She was curator of the first Curiosa section of Paris Photo in 2018, and the curator of the French Pavilion of the 58th Venice Biennale,

Christian Louboutin is CNN Style's new guest editor. He's commissioned a series of stories on the topic of "Journeys."

Bordeaux, France, 1968. Pierre Molinier puts on some makeup, a black eye mask covers half of his face, fishnet stockings curve around his elegant legs and a metal chain binds them to the stool he sits on. He starts photographing himself, once standing naked in front of the camera, a second time wearing a wig and his bottom facing the lens. This was a typical moment for the French photographer.

After capturing himself on film, Molinier would typically use silver scissors to cut around the body contours in the photos he had just shot, and reassemble them into a single photomontage of his own body; a mise en abyme -- or, the same image replicated to give the impression of infinity -- that he would immortalize with his folding camera.

Born in 1900, Pierre Molinier's life and work as a painter and photographer was filled with dark fantasies and sensational anecdotes. He is infamous for his fetishistic depictions of women's legs, his disturbing obsession with his sister, his taste for firearms, his wanderings in silk stocking along the streets of Bordeaux, and his tragic end in 1976 on his bed, a pistol in his mouth.

"Pierre Molinier tirant au pistolet" (Pierre Molinier draws a pistol), circa 1955 Credit: Pierre Molinier/Courtesy Galerie Chrsitophe Gaillard, Paris

His enigmatic photographs continue to fascinate audiences, artists and photographers, and his multifaceted body of work, with its fantasized and fetishized bodies, is still challenging to this day.

Originally trained as a painter, Pierre Molinier began his artistic career in the late 1920s, producing landscapes and portraits inspired by Impressionism. But then he took a change of course, and in 1951 he presented a controversial erotic painting at a respectable art salon in Bordeaux. Entitled "Le Grand Combat," it depicted a swirling multitude of (possibly women's) legs in fishnet stockings, and, shortly after, he started to send images of his works to poet and writer André Breton, the godfather of French surrealism.

His and Breton's encounters led to a solo exhibition at the famous Paris surrealist gallery L'Etoile Scellée in 1956, exposing Molinier's work to a wider audience. On the opening night, Breton wrote to Molinier: "Today, you've become the master of vertigo. Your photographs don't leave a shadow of a doubt as to your aspirations and it seems difficult to me to be more troubling. They are as beautiful as they are scandalous."





















"Introït", 1967 Credit: Pierre Molinier/Courtesy Galerie Chrsitophe Gaillard, Paris


Moving away from painting, in the early 1960s Pierre Molinier started to dedicate his practice to photographic work, mainly self-portraits, enhanced by a process of photomontage. His technique often consisted of photographing himself dressed-up, body hair waxed and with make-up on, his face covered with a mask and him dressed in black fetish accessorizes -- corsets, gloves, stockings and high-heels, veils, fishnets, and sometimes a top hat. He would then cut around the outlines of the body parts in the photos and reassemble them in a final collage photograph; an ideal image of himself. Sometimes, he would replace his own head with the face of a doll. The process was similar to the enduring surrealist group drawing game, "Exquisite Corpse." And although he was greatly influenced by the surrealists, Molinier never officially joined that movement, remaining a lone practitioner throughout his life.

I suffer from a very serious sickness named eroticism.
Pierre Molinier

Costume was core to his experimental works. Whether dressing up for a self-portrait or using one of his male and female models -- some of whom were his lovers -- all subjects were disguised with outfits and wigs, posing against backdrops of dark fabric in swathes. This theatricality was also a key part of his practice, as he typically shot his erotic scenes in the bourgeois interior of his studio in Bordeaux, using baroque screens, velvet curtains and floral wallpapers as backgrounds. This provocative contrast between the erotic and the acceptable caused an electric tension in his images.

Throughout his artistic practice, Molinier deconstructed sexual identities, dismembering the representations and stereotypes of the masculine and the feminine self, stirring up gender trouble and transgressing the presupposed sacredness of the indivisible body.


L'Enfant homme, 1969 Credit: Pierre Molinier/Private Collection


His depictions of transgender, androgynous and transvestite bodies, which were cut up, reassembled and played with, invented a surrealist, pornographic theater of uninhibited desires and fantasies, utterly shocking the French bourgeois audience of the 1960s. His work was considered by many to be perverse, even depraved, and despite Breton's efforts, Molinier was never accepted by the French cultural elite.
But it is perhaps because of the unflinching nature of much of his work that Molinier's major legacy has endured, spanning across contemporary visual art, photography, fashion and cinema. His first posthumous retrospective was at Paris' major institution Centre Pompidou, three years after his death, and he is frequently included in shows that explore themes of identity, queerness and photographic innovation, Kiss My Genders at the Hayward Gallery in London was a recent one.

His influence can be seen in the work of hugely influential Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, and controversial American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe -- in its eroticism, fetishism and sexual powerplay. And in the work of Cindy Sherman, whose own self-portraits pushed the boundaries of gender and identity in photography.


Féminin pluriel est triste, planche n°32 du Chaman, tirage argentique d'époque Credit: Pierre Molinier/Private Collection


French filmmaker Gaspard Noé has expressed his deep fascination for Molinier's colorful character as much as for his decadent images, while fashion designers such as Jean-Paul Gaultier and shoe designer f have carried Molinier's heritage in their collections; his aesthetic mythology and his ode to provocation, mystery and desire.

Not just complex in its technique and subject matter, Molinier's kaleidoscopic images confronted traditional ideas of power, domination and gender fluidity. They can be seen as icons for a post-gender era, and the photographer himself as a trailblazer for today's queer and questioning culture. His photomontages of merged body parts transgressed the limits of the human form, creating a space to imagine new visual possibilities -- and political possibilities too.

How Salvador Dalí has influenced your wardrobe


Credit: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images Europe/Getty Images

Written by Rosalind Jana, CNN

When Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí first put a lobster on a dress, he wanted to be provocative. It worked. His 1937 collaboration with boundary pushing fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli caused consternation. The silk organza A-line gown they created together, subsequently worn by Wallis Simpson in the pages of Vogue, elicited shock, head scratching, and plenty of voluble conversation from the fashion world. Apparently Dalí was disappointed though. He felt that the dress was missing one final touch: a dash of mayonnaise.

The Duchess of Windsor wearing a white Schiaparelli dress. Credit: Cecil Beaton/Conde Nast Collection/Getty Images

It's hard in the present day to imagine a lobster on a dress being such a big deal. It's the kind of print you could easily find now, adorning everything from loafers to smocks. Henrik Vibskov's Spring-Summer 2020 collection featured plenty of pink and red crustaceans, for example, and Louis Vuitton's Autumn-Winter 2020 menswear show saw models stride down the catwalk wearing white fluffy coats decorated with oversized, similarly plush lobsters.


Louis Vuitton Spring-Summer 2021 Men's show. Credit: Yanshan Zhang/Getty Images

The reason we now find such imagery so commonplace is, in part, thanks to a 20th century avant garde art movement: Surrealism. With an emphasis on the untapped power of dreams and a drive to create fantastical art through techniques such as automatism (spontaneous, uninhibited writing and artwork) and juxtapositions of unlikely images Surrealism aimed to release the unconscious mind and, in doing so, set loose the imagination. It was deeply influenced by Freud's writing about hidden desires and feelings, as well as other psychological and political thinkers including Karl Marx.


The search for Alberto Giacometti's lost sculptures

The word itself was first used in 1917, but it really came to the fore as movement in the 1920s. In the 1930s. Plenty of Surrealism's key proponents turned to design, creating extraordinary, often startling objects. A select few embraced fashion too. Schiaparelli collaborated with both Dalí and fellow artist Méret Oppenheim, who would go on to incorporate clothes to unnerving ends in her own work, such as gloves adorned with fur and veins. Joan Miró designed bright, brash costumes for the Ballet Russes. Eileen Agar devised playful designs like her 1936 "Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse," which featured seashore detritus including a lobster's tail and a fishing net. This back and forth traffic between art and fashion manifested in other ways too. Photographers including Man Ray and Lee Miller brought a Surrealist eye to their fashion photography, while figures such as painter Leonor Fini developed a reputation for outrageous costuming.

Madelle Hegeler shows off jewelry by Salvadore Dali in New York. Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Many of their experiments have since bled through to mainstream fashion. Elsa Schiaparelli's 1938 padded skeleton dress has inspired countless designs featuring bones, spines, hearts and other things usually kept beneath the skin, with Alexander McQueen's Spring- Summer 1998 spine corset in collaboration with jeweler Shaun Leane a particularly notable example. Elsewhere, the movement's desire to upend the normal has been reflected in shows as disparate as Hussein Chalayan's Autumn-Winter 2000 catwalk show featuring tables that turned into skirts and Victor & Rolf's Spring-Summer 2010 collection of tulle ball-gowns with huge cut-away holes.

Victor & Rolf Spring Spring-Summer 2010 show. Credit: Dominique Charriau/WireImage/Getty Images

More recently, designers have demonstrated a renewed kinship to the art movement. Last year several labels cited Surrealist creators as major reference points. Simone Rocha's Autumn-Winter 2019 show drew on Louise Bourgeois' fearless approach to the female body, the designer subsequently working with art gallery Hauser & Wirth later that same year to release a set of earrings directly inspired by Bourgeois' fabric sculptures. Fellow designers Eudon Choi and Roland Mouret also respectively cited Méret Oppenheim and Lee Miller as key figures for their Autumn-Winter 2019 shows. Dior, too, has repeatedly rummaged through Surrealist history, with head designer Maria Grazia Chiuri name-checking artists and photographers including Leonor Fini, Leonora Carrington, and Dora Maar in recent seasons.

Simone Rocha Autumn-Winter 2020 show. Credit: Luke Walker/BFC/Getty Images

Some of this revived interest can almost certainly be traced to the art world's renewed focus on the work of female Surrealists, many of whom have been celebrated in retrospectives and other exhibitions after decades of neglect. This Surrealist preoccupation is even more fitting against the backdrop of a year of tumult in which our own understanding of normality has been ruptured.

Over the summer Dior's Autumn-Winter 2020 couture collection came complete with a photographic campaign shot by Brigitte Niedermair referencing key Surrealist motifs like disembodied hands and eyes, while other brands like Valentino offered dreamlike images of gowns presented in gargantuan scale. Presently, too, brands including Victoria Beckham and Prada are selling shirts covered in free-floating lips, reminiscent of Man Ray's multimedia images and Salvador Dalí's bejeweled 1949 lips brooch.

"Ruby Lips" ruby and cultured pearl brooch, designed by Salvador Dali. Credit: Artyom Geodakyan/TASS/Getty Images

During the Spring-Summer 2021 shows in September Surrealism infiltrated a number of collections: most notably back at the house of Schiaparelli. In recent years the fashion house has drawn heavily on its heritage, reworking many of Elsa Schiaparelli's key themes and garments for a contemporary audience. This season the current artistic director Daniel Roseberry's own vision extended to shocking pink suits covered in ghostly white limbs, shirts painted with breasts, and gold jewellery in the shape of nails, noses, and bulbous teeth.

The lone surrealist whose erotic art provokes to this day

Fashion is so often said to be a reflection of the times. During this strange ongoing crisis, the industry's response has been split. Many brands have had to decide whether this is a year to focus on the concrete or the fantastical, while also trying to figure out how to remain not just relevant but necessary in the world facing so many critical challenges. Under such circumstances, it's not surprising to see so many embrace Surrealism's fractured approach to reality. It's not just high-end designers either. Right now plenty of retailers are also selling clothes where the sleeves are big, the patterns bold, and the details unusual.
As Salvador Dalí once claimed, "I try to create fantastical things, magical things, things like in a dream." Right now, perhaps such a statement speaks to our collective mood: one in which we are navigating a new and often unpredictable era, looking not just for straightforward escapism but, much like a dream, new ways of interpreting the everyday too.

Vivid portraits shine light on Tahiti's 'third gender'

Credit: Namsa Leuba
Written by Matthew Ponsford, CNN

Updated March 2020

On the Polynesian island of Tahiti, there is said to be something akin to a sixth sense -- one that belongs to neither men nor women. Instead, it is the sole domain of the "mahu," a community recognized as being outside the traditional male-female divide.

"Mahu have this other sense that men or women don't have," said Swiss-Guinean photographer Namsa Leuba, whose images from the island are showing at a new exhibition in London. "It is well known in (French Polynesia) that they have something special."

In Tahiti, mahu are considered a third or "liminal" gender, born biologically male but recognized by peers as distinct, often from early in their lives. Their gender identity has been accepted on the island since time immemorial, and mahu traditionally play key social and spiritual roles, as guardians of cultural rituals and dances, or providers of care for children and elders.






















Namsa Leuba


Leuba's photo series, "Illusions: The Myth of the 'Vahine' through Gender Dysphoria," shows the diversity of gender identities in French Polynesia, where the photographer spends half her year.

In a telephone interview from Tahiti, Leuba said the additional power that the Mahu apparently possess is difficult to describe. It is, she explained, a mixture of empathy, intuition, generosity and creativity -- all words that might be applied to Leuba's wide-ranging photography.

Unseen identities
Since graduating from the Lausanne University of Art and Design (ECAL) in 2010, Leuba has developed an approach that mixes elements of documentary photography with the rich staging of fashion shoots. The result is something she calls "docu-fiction."

NAMSA LEUBA

Describing herself as African-European (her mother is Guinean and her father is Swiss), Leuba said she aims to reflect, through fiction, realities made invisible when viewed through a Western colonial lens.
In 2011, she traveled to the Guinean capital, Conakry, for a project that would set the tone for her later work. Exploring animist beliefs in the city, she brought portraits of regular people -- mostly strangers she met on the street -- to life with elaborate poses and backdrops.

Namsa Leuba

The project, along with later work across Africa, confronted the legacy of colonialism and considered how Western perceptions have impacted present-day societies. And Leuba developed these ideas further in Tahiti.

Images from the series went on show at an all-female London gallery, Boogie Wall, last year. The exhibition aimed to show the complex gender and sexual identities that exist in Tahiti, directly attacking stereotypes that rely on exoticism and the sexualization of Polynesian women.

Namsa Leuba

Mahu's traditional artistic roles have made them a subject of fascination for visiting artists including Paul Gauguin, whose 19th-century portraits of young Tahitians strongly influenced Western impressions of Polynesian culture while painting a controversial picture of an exotic and sexually permissive paradise.

Central to these stereotypes was the ideal of the "vahine." The term, which translates simply as "woman," came to be used in the West to mean submissive girls or young women, embodied in the sexualized poses in Gauguin's paintings (indeed, he would marry a girl in her early teens during a visit to the island in 1891).

Invisible genders

In "Illusions," Leuba tackles both the "vahine" myth and the influence of 19th-century Christian missionaries, who preached the Bible's binary view on gender and instituted laws that criminalized relationships with mahu.

The portraits are often shot in everyday surroundings, but by using bright body paint and stylized costume, Leuba aims to reassert the individuality of her subjects. Her images also include people who identify as "rae-rae," trans women who, unlike many mahu, often pursue gender reassignment surgery.
"I already knew what I wanted to have," said Leuba. "For me, it was very important to see (the subject's) beauty and the power -- in my pictures, it's very strong look, a strong posture -- and to (allow them to) make themselves beautiful"

Namsa Leuba

Leuba interviews her subjects for hours before photographing them. While a few were cautious at first, having previously had uncomfortable experiences with voyeuristic photographers, she said, more began coming forward after the first images appeared in magazines in New York.

Through use of elaborate staging, Leuba avoids the rawness typical of documentary photography. Instead, she said her positive, glamorous approach allows eclectic stories to shine, including histories of homelessness and conflict, along with journeys of acceptance from families and culture.

"Sometimes I would hear some really (tough) stuff that has happened to them, and it was totally not sexy or glamorous. It was difficult. And others were well-accepted by their family and their community," Leuba said.

"All of the 'lifecycles' were totally different."

AMERICAN SCHADENFREUDE

CNN: Canada crushed the Covid-19 curve but complacency is fueling a deadly second wave

By Paula Newton, CNN
December 8, 2020

Canadian premier's impassioned plea: Stay home for the holidays 01:38

Ottawa (CNN)"At least we're not as bad as the States."

Those were the words uttered by so many Canadians during the first wave of coronavirus, perhaps without malice although with a good dose of smugness.
But that complacency may have helped fuel a deadly second wave in Canada that is now straining hospital capacity in nearly every region of the country as health officials impose more restrictions and lockdowns.

"What you're saying is we're better than the worst country in the world," says Amir Attaran, an American-raised Canadian professor of law and public health at the University of Ottawa during an interview with CNN.

For months, Attaran has been an unsparing critic, warning that by measuring itself against an American yardstick, Canada's Covid-19 response was bound to falter.
And falter it has

Canada's 'Atlantic bubble' has been a sanctuary. But it may be bursting soon 03:31

"Over the last few days, we've seen new records of Covid-19 cases in a number of provinces. Hospitalizations are rising, families are losing people and our most vulnerable are at risk. Just because we're getting closer to vaccines doesn't mean we can afford to become complacent," warned Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during a press conference Monday.

So, what went wrong?

"You need to drive community transmission to almost nothing or near nothing and then do the aggressive testing contact tracing and isolation which we never did," says Attaran.

During the first wave of Covid-19 Canadians were mostly compliant, cautious and serious about staying home, masking up and following orders issued by earnest public health officials. And the pandemic was rarely politicized.

But in early fall, Canadian public health officials warned that private, household gatherings were fueling a surge in cases and community transmission.

Then, Canadian Thanksgiving in early October seemed to seal the country's fate as infection rates surged for weeks afterwards.

Canada's numbers are heading in the wrong direction

Canada has logged record new cases and deaths from the coronavirus in the past month, according to Covid-19 tracking data from Johns Hopkins University.
The country has reported more than 425,000 cases of Covid-19 and nearly 12,800 deaths to date, according to Johns Hopkins.

New daily cases are now 10 times higher than they were in late summer with deaths averaging about 88 per day now, according to Canada's Public Health Agency.

Health care workers talk to people waiting to BE tested for Covid-19 at a clinic in Montreal on Sunday, December 6.

For a few days in summer, Canadian government data reported no deaths from Covid-19.

By nearly every measure of Covid-19 tracking, Canada is still faring better than the US but Canadian officials have warned that hospital capacity is reaching its breaking point and community transmission must be reduced.

According to government data, Canada now has about 2,400 people with the virus being treated in hospitals. That's a few hundred less than Los Angeles County reported Monday even though Canada has nearly 4 times the population.

More than 14.9 million coronavirus cases have been reported in the US so far and more than 284,000 people have died. The US also is dealing with a surge in cases that health experts expect worsen, anticipating new waves from December holiday gatherings on top of a potential surge from Thanksgiving week.

But again, public health experts warn American comparisons should offer little comfort to Canadians.

Lack of adequate testing

For weeks now Canada's public health agency has reported that, on average, about 75,000 Canadians are being tested daily. That means Canada is testing at about half the rate, per capita, than the US.

Public health experts say Canada must be more aggressive with testing in order to bring down community transmission and detect asymptomatic spread.

According to a report released Monday by one of Canada's largest long-term care operators, that lack of testing has tragically allowed the virus to stalk and kill residents of nursing and retirement homes in Canada.

Canadian government data show that as of August 2020, nearly 80% of all Canadian coronavirus deaths were among residents of long-term care facilities. During a press conference in late October, Canada's Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam confirmed that figure did not change much in the fall although the national public health agency is awaiting data.

And yet lack of adequate testing in these facilities continues.

In a report released Monday by a government-owned long-term care operator, an expert advisory panel noted not just the testing failures of the first wave, but that inadequate testing continues.

"...although it was widely understood that long term care residents faced an extremely high risk of serious complications and death from Covid-19, and so had much to gain from testing, they and the staff who look after them, were not prioritized for testing within the system," according to the report titled "A Perfect Storm."

Vaccines are coming but timeline is an issue

Trudeau has said for weeks that Canada has secured "one of the most diverse" vaccine portfolios in the world and a CNN analysis of government purchase agreements shows Canada could easily have 4 to 5 times the vaccines needed to vaccinate its entire population of about 38 million people.

It's the timeline that's the problem.

"Vaccines are coming," announced Trudeau during a press conference in Ottawa Monday, saying Canada has an agreement with Pfizer to begin early delivery of up to 249,000 doses of its vaccine candidate.

But Canada's 2020 rollout of vaccine is largely symbolic as it represents just a fraction of the 20 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine that Canada says it has pre-purchased.

Trudeau himself said late last month that because Canada had very little capacity to manufacture vaccines, other counties like the US, UK and Germany would be able to vaccinate more their citizens on a faster timeline than Canada.

Addressing those prior comments, Trudeau said "we wanted not to get people's hopes up."

Health Canada is expected to approve the Pfizer vaccine candidate within days and is currently reviewing data for three other candidates, including those from Moderna, Astra-Zeneca and Johnson & Johnson.

The concern is that despite aggressive procurement, Canadians will still be vaccinated later than citizens in the US and Europe.

"It's a shock, I really did not expect that when I warned Canada would be late on this that I would be proved right. It's heartbreaking, it really is. It will be heartbreaking because it will cost lives," Attaran said.

Multi-week lockdowns don't seem to be working

In recent weeks the tone from public health officials around the country has been the same: They are pleading with Canadians to stay home, stay away from each other and wear masks.

That has been backed by various degrees of lockdowns and new restrictions in cities and towns throughout the country, including larger urban centers like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. But there is little evidence the lockdowns and restrictions are having a significant impact on the infection rate.

Canada's largest province is under a lockdown to slow a second wave of coronavirus cases.

In Toronto, now in its third week of a second lockdown, cases continue to surge with daily records broken in the last few days.

"The case counts are so high, that I can only call this a very, very serious situation," said Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto's medical officer of health during a press conference Monday.

She that the virus was spreading so aggressively in the city that she did not want to think about what the case load would be if Toronto had not entered a lockdown.
There is a similar story in the province of Alberta where restrictions that fall well short of a full lockdown have failed to stem the surge of community transmission.

Toronto begins a four-week lockdown -- its second of the pandemic -- as Covid-19 cases surge

Alberta now has one of the highest per capita rates of infection anywhere in Canada.

"I will be blunt, so far we are not bending the curve back down, we are still witnessing very high transmission of the virus which is putting enormous pressure on our hospitals, intensive care units and health care workers," said Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta's chief medical officer of health, at a press conference Monday.
Attaran says Alberta and other Canadian regions failed to lock down early enough with strict enforcement believing they were sparing the economy.

"What Canada did wrong is what very many places in the world have done wrong and it's that their politicians have chosen to treat the virus like stakeholder that you can cut deals with," Attaran said, adding that the current half-measures will take much longer to bring the infection rate under control.

Government steps in to help out financially

From the very beginning of the pandemic Trudeau has tried to reassure Canadians that he "had their back." And he has made good on that promise with piles of cash handed out to tens of millions of Canadians.

A CNN review of nearly a dozen programs reveals a payout to residents and Canadian business during this pandemic of nearly $200 billion and counting.

Canada, struggling to control a second wave of coronavirus infections, announces billions more in stimulus

The programs range from a direct payment to individuals, through unemployment benefits and the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) with about a third of all Canadian adults receiving $1,500 a month for several months.

Add to that a wage and rent subsidy program for business owners, payments to students and those with disabilities and special programs for fishers and farmers.
Trudeau says the programs and the money will keep coming until the pandemic subsides.

In fact the Canadian stimulus was so effective that Statistics Canada reported an increase of disposable household income of more than 7% in the last nine months, with government payouts bulking up personal savings.

It's unclear, however, what the long-term impact of the spending will have on the Canadian economy.

Across the border, political leaders in the United States are struggling to come to an agreement on another stimulus package as several key pandemic relief programs are set to expire at the end of the year.