'Smart' default enrollment policies under ACA can help consumers save, study finds



"Smart" enrollment can help consumers insured under the Affordable Care Act leverage savings, a new study has found. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

July 16 (UPI) -- A "smart" default enrollment policy that automatically shifts low-income consumers to Affordable Care Act plans with discounted premiums, reduced deductibles and "generous" benefits would decrease monthly costs by more than $100, a study published Friday by JAMA Health Forum found.

The concept effectively leverages a provision under the American Rescue Plan, signed into law by President Joe Biden in March, which increases tax credit subsidies through 2022 to reduce marketplace plans' premiums for qualifying enrollees, the researchers said.

Because of the provision, under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, a person earning 150% of the federal poverty level pays essentially pays nothing for a "silver" plan on the health marketplace, the researchers said.

Currently, though, consumers insured under the ACA who automatically enroll in the same health insurance plan at the start of a new year may unwittingly end up with coverage that costs more and provides fewer benefits.

Instead, their "smart" enrollment strategy would automatically enroll in a plan that provides the same benefits as their current one, at the same or lower cost, the researchers said.

"Life changes, policies change and choice changes, so a good choice this year [under the ACA] may or may not be your best choice next year," study co-author David M. Anderson told UPI in an email.

"The American Rescue Plan has upped subsidies for everyone, made zero premium plans available to more people with less cost-sharing -- active choice makes the possibility of a bad choice being made far lower," said Anderson, a researcher at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

Since July 1, unemployed people have been able to enroll in health coverage under the ACA with significant federal subsidies that could help lower premiums to as little as zero per month.

The change allows anyone who received or was approved to receive unemployment compensation for any week in 2021 to apply for subsidized coverage, at least through the end of 2022, according to Anderson and his colleagues.

However, even with increased subsidies, consumers who choose to automatically roll over their insurance plan from 2021 to 2022 could end up with a plan that costs more and provides poorer coverage, the researchers said.

This is because plans with the same name often change benefits, deductibles and co-pays from year to year, meaning consumers who think they are getting the same coverage at the same cost will actually pay more for less, they said.

The "smart" default concept, first proposed by the Hamilton Project in 2015, would mitigate this by allowing consumers enrolled in existing plans to "default" or opt into different existing plans during open enrollment based on cost and value.

In their analysis of nearly 750,000 ACA enrollees in California, nearly 6% under current policy would default into more expensive plans -- even with American Rescue Plan subsidies -- with "less generous" benefits, the data showed.

Of these enrollees, 98% would have incomes below 250% of the federal poverty level, the researchers said.

However, with a smart enrollment strategy, these same consumers would default to plans that save them, on average, $102 in monthly premium costs, nearly $2,000 in annual deductibles and almost $50 specialty prescription co-pays, they said.

"State and federal exchanges have significant data on individuals and households that are returning to the [ACA] marketplaces for 2022," Anderson said.

"They can leverage this data to help eliminate objectively bad choices by defaulting individuals into plans that are not objectively dominated by options that are offered by the same insurer on the same network," he said.

Fauci: US might 'still have polio' if media back then opposed vaccine

Issued on: 17/07/2021 -

Top US disease expert Anthony Fauci, seen speaking to a New York church group on June 6, 2021, has said that polio might not have been eliminated if it faced the media resistance that Covid vaccines face 

Jeenah Moon GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File


Washington (AFP)

Top US scientist Anthony Fauci on Saturday blasted commentators who sound an anti-vaccination theme, saying America might still be battling smallpox and polio if today's kind of misinformation existed back then.

The comments from the country's leading infectious disease expert reflected mounting frustration over the sharp slowdown in the Covid-19 vaccination rate in the United States, even as the disease has been surging in states with low rates.

It also came days after President Joe Biden expressed his own visible frustration, saying social media that carry widely heard misinformation about vaccines are "killing people."

Fauci was responding to a CNN interviewer who asked if he thought "we could have defeated the measles or eradicated polio if you had Fox News, night after night, warning people about these vaccine issues that are just bunk."

Fauci said: "We probably would still have smallpox and we probably would still have polio ... if we had the kind of false information that's being spread."

Initial vaccine skepticism in many areas has increasingly evolved into outright hostility, a message magnified by baseless conspiracy theories regularly aired on Fox and other conservative networks.

"Maybe it doesn't work and they're simply not telling you that," Tucker Carlson, one of Fox's most popular commentators, said recently.

The vaccines have instead proved extraordinarily effective. Officials in Maryland, for example, said that not one of the people who died of the disease last month in the state had been vaccinated.

To suggestions of sending vaccine educators door-to-door to encourage people to get the jab, Fox commentator Charlie Hurt said, "They've become like the Taliban."

Conservative politicians have increasingly echoed former president Donald Trump's mockery of Covid precautions.

Door-to-door educators, suggested Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, might instead come and take people's guns -- or their Bibles.

After an initial burst of vaccinations around the country, the pace has slowed sharply.

Biden's announced goal of having 70 percent of adults vaccinated by July 4 fell short by about three points, and the vaccination rate has slowed further since then, even as the disease's Delta variant has spread rapidly.

A few Republicans have sought to place blame for the disease's ravages and economic dislocations on the widely respected Fauci himself.

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has introduced the so-called Fire Fauci Act, calling for his salary to be reduced to zero and requiring the Senate to confirm a replacement. The bill is not expected to go anywhere.

Fauci was asked on CNN about T-shirts being sold by a political action group linked to Florida governor Ron DeSantis that say "Don't Fauci My Florida."

He appeared genuinely perplexed.

"Taking an individual who stands for public health, for truth... and to use my name in a derogatory way to prevent people from doing things that's for the benefit of their own health, go figure that one out.

"That doesn't make any sense at all," he said, shaking his head.

© 2021 AFP

Environmental concerns grow as space tourism lifts off

Issued on: 18/07/2021 - 

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo uses a type of synthetic rubber as fuel and burns it in nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas Patrick T. FALLON AFP/File

Washington (AFP)

After years of waiting, Richard Branson's journey to space this month on a Virgin Galactic vessel was supposed to be a triumphant homecoming. Instead, the jaunt attracted significant criticism -- about its carbon footprint.

With Jeff Bezos set to launch on a Blue Origin rocket on July 20, and Elon Musk's SpaceX planning an all-civilian orbital mission in September, the nascent space tourism industry finds itself facing tough questions about its environmental impact.

Right now, rocket launches as a whole don't happen often enough to pollute significantly.


"The carbon dioxide emissions are totally negligible compared to other human activities or even commercial aviation," NASA's chief climate advisor Gavin Schmidt told AFP.

But some scientists are worried about the potential for longer term harm as the industry is poised for major growth, particularly impacts to the ozone layer in the still poorly understood upper atmosphere.

Virgin Galactic, which came under fire in op-eds on CNN and Forbes, as well as on social media, for sending its billionaire founder to space for a few minutes in a fossil fuel-guzzling spaceship, says its carbon emissions are about equivalent to a business-class ticket from London to New York.

The company "has already taken steps to offset the carbon emissions from its test flights and is examining opportunities to offset the carbon emissions for future customer flights, and reduce our supply chain's carbon footprint," it said in a statement to AFP.

But while transatlantic flights carry hundreds of people, Virgin's emissions work out to around 4.5 tonnes per passenger in a six passenger flight, according to an analysis published by French astrophysicist Roland Lehoucq and colleagues in The Conversation.

That's roughly equivalent to driving a typical car around the Earth, and more than twice the individual annual carbon budget recommended to meet the objectives of the Paris climate accord.

"The issue here is really one of disproportionate impacts," Darin Toohey, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder told AFP.

"I actually grew up on the space program and that got me into science.... but if someone offered me a free ride, I would be very nervous taking it because I would know that my own footprint is way larger than it should be," he said.

- Cleaner fuels possible -

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo uses a type of synthetic rubber as fuel and burns it in nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas.

The fuel pumps black carbon into upper stratosphere, 30-50 kilometers (18 to 30 miles) high.

Once there, these particles can have multiple impacts, from reflecting sunlight and causing a nuclear winter effect, to accelerating chemical reactions that deplete the ozone layer, which is vital to protecting people from harmful radiation.

"We could be at a dangerous point," said Toohey, who wants more scientific investigations into these effects before the launches become more frequent.

Virgin has said it wants to conduct 400 flights a year.

Compared to Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo spaceplanes, Blue Origin's are much cleaner, according to a recent paper by scientist Martin Ross of Aerospace, which Bezos' company plugged on Twitter.

That's because it burns liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, which combusts as water vapor.

Ross' paper found Blue Origin's vertical launch reusable rocket causes a hundred times less ozone loss and 750 times less climate forcing magnitude than Virgin's, according to ballpark calculations.

But that doesn't mean it's totally clean.

"It takes electricity to make liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen," Ross told AFP.

"You could go back and calculate how much electricity was used to make the propellant," he said. "It depends how far back in the supply chain you look."

- Space shaming? -

The impact of suborbital launches such as those by Virgin and Blue Origin pale in comparison to the impact of rockets that achieve orbit.

When SpaceX puts four private citizens into space in September, it will use its Falcon 9 rocket, which calculations show puts out the equivalent of 395 transatlantic flights-worth of carbon emissions.

"We are living in the era of climate change and starting an activity that increases emissions as part of a tourism activity is not good timing," Annette Toivonen, author of the book "Sustainable Space Tourism," told AFP.

The world is far more aware of the climate crisis now than when these companies were founded in the early 2000s and that could encourage businesses to look at ways to minimize pollution through cleaner technologies to get ahead of the problem.

"Who would want to be a space tourist if you can't tell people you were a space tourist?" argued Toivonen, who lectures at Finland's Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences.

© 2021 AFP

Deal! Sports trading cards boom in pandemic-era US

Issued on: 18/07/2021

Traders try to strike deals on sports cards at Bleecker Trading in New York on July 06, 2021 Kena Betancur AFP


New York (AFP)

Inside an unassuming store in New York's Greenwich Village, around a dozen men unlock black briefcases, remove sports cards and begin to trade them -- a growing hobby and industry that has boomed during the pandemic.

Excitement is high after a San Francisco-based investment fund announced earlier that day that it had bought a card of Golden State Warriors' basketball star Stephen Curry for $5.9 million, setting a new record.

Michael Campobasso, a 38-year-old jewelry dealer, hopes that sale will spur interest in his highly graded card of Curry from the three-time NBA champion's rookie 2009-10 season.


"After that card this is probably one of his more coveted cards. I'd sell it for $80,000," says Campobasso, who paid $25,000 for it last year.#photo1

The sports trading card industry has been growing for several years but coronavirus lockdowns reinvigorated hobbyists and attracted new ones, with investors helping to send prices skyrocketing.

"It's had a massive impact," Jacob Salter, product manager at Bleecker Trading which hosted the trade night in New York, said of the pandemic.

"People were home, they were bored, cooped up in their house, reliving their childhood. They started buying sports cards," added the 25-year-old.

The early days of lockdown coincided with the release in April 2020 of hit Netflix series "The Last Dance," about Michael Jordan's celebrated Chicago Bulls team of the 1990s.

It sent demand for Jordan memorabilia soaring and contributed towards basketball cards taking center stage in the sports trading card world, which had long been dominated by baseball.

In February this year, a rare Jordan card signed by the six-time NBA champion himself sold for $1.44 million at auction, breaking the previous record for a card of his by $500,000.

A LeBron James rookie card fetched $5.2 million in April.

Basketball cards dominate exchanges at the Bleecker Trading event, where organizer Salter estimates the total value of cards in the room over the course of the night at $20 million.

The authenticity of the cards have all been attested to by grading companies, which rate them on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the highest. Ratings factors include rarity and condition.

All of the cards are encased in see-through plastic "slabs," which the traders proudly display on racks inside hard suitcases that have combination number locks due to their contents' high-value.#photo3

For 28-year-old Vahe Hekimian, collecting sports cards started as a hobby that morphed into his main source of income.

"It's a passion. I love it. But I also sell to keep going," he tells AFP, explaining that sports stars' performances impact the value of their cards.

- 'Assets' -

He once paid $50,000 in a partial cash-trade transaction for rising NBA star Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks who will represent Slovenia at this summer's Olympics.

The most valuable trade of the night exceeds $90,000 and involves multiple cards, including of baseball hotshot Shohei Ohtani and young NFL quarterback Justin Herbert. Those involved want to remain anonymous.#photo4

Campobasso doesn't sell his card of Curry but he does strike a deal worth $11,000.

A 44-year-old collector calling himself Cage Lawyer, who owns a Jordan card worth half a million dollars, says trading cards are now increasingly seen as astute investments.

"People view them as an alternative asset class now, something akin to art and cryptocurrency. People are looking for something to put their money in to hedge against inflation," he explains.

The frenzy is a boon for the growing number of investment groups now trading in sports cards.

Alt, which invests in untraditional assets, estimates that the trading card market is currently worth $15 billion. It splashed out the $5.9 million on the autographed Curry card.

Collectable is another company that engages in fractional ownership where investors buy shares in cards.#photo5

PWCC is a trading card marketplace that holds auctions and runs a secure vault where owners can store their cards.

It expects to do over $500 million in sales this year, roughly three times what it did in 2020, according to business development director Jesse Craig.

"We're very confident that our industry is going to keep growing," he told AFP.

© 2021 AFP

Cuban president denounces unrest as a 'lie'

Issued on: 17/07/2021 -

A woman holds a flag with the image of late Argentinian revolutionary Che Guevara in Havana, on July 17, 2021 YAMIL LAGE AFP


Havana (AFP)

Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel on Saturday denounced what he said was a false narrative over unrest on the Caribbean island, speaking during a rally alongside ex-president Raul Castro and before thousands of supporters in Havana.

"What the world is seeing of Cuba is a lie," Diaz-Canel said.

He decried what he said was the dissemination of "false images" on social networks that "encourage and glorify the outrage and destruction of property."


Diaz-Canel's comments come days after historic demonstrations against the communist government.

On July 11 and 12, thousands of Cubans took to the streets in 40 cities around the island shouting "Freedom," "Down with the dictatorship," and "We're hungry."

One person has died and more than 100 have been arrested, including independent journalists and opposition activists, since the protests broke out over the worst economic crisis in decades.

There is an "overflowing hatred on social networks," the president insisted on Saturday.

Cuba cut off internet access on the island from Sunday for three days after the protests erupted last weekend.

It restored access on Wednesday, but social media and messaging apps such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter remained blocked on 3G and 4G networks.

Social media is the only way Cubans can reach independent news outlets while messaging apps are their main means of communicating among themselves.

US President Joe Biden has said Washington is considering ways to ease internet restrictions, though analysts have warned it could be tricky for technological and political reasons.

- 'Cold calculation' -

Diaz-Canel said the "lie" was not committed "by chance or mistake; all this is the cold calculation of an unconventional-war manual."#photo1

The rallies are the largest since the Cuban revolution of the 1950s and come as the country endures its worst economic crisis in 30 years, with chronic shortages of electricity, food and medicine, just as it records a spike in coronavirus infections.

Havana, under US sanctions since 1962, has blamed the show of discontent on Washington pursuing a "policy of economic suffocation to provoke social unrest."

Biden called Cuba a "failed state" on Thursday and said it is "repressing their citizens." He said the US was prepared to potentially send significant amounts of Covid vaccine to the island. Cuba has also been developing its own vaccines.

"Born to conquer and not to be conquered!" shouted the crowd at the rally, which had gathered at dawn on the Malecon, Havana's famed oceanfront boulevard.

Castro, 90, was drawn out of retirement by the gravity of the protests.

Shortly before the rally began, police arrested a man who shouted "Patria y Vida" ("Homeland and Life"), the title of a protest rap song which has become the anthem of anti-government demonstrators.

The official newspaper Granma said similar rallies were called in other cities including Santiago de Cuba, Bayamo, Camaguey and Santa Clara.

© 2021 AFP

Billionaires in space: Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin touts rocket safety



Blue Origin launches its New Shepard rocket and capsule from the company's launch site in West Texas on January 23, 2019. Photo courtesy of Blue Origin

July 16 (UPI) -- As Jeff Bezos prepares to become the second billionaire to blast into space on his own company's rocket next week, his Blue Origin is touting the safety of its rocket system.

The New Shepard suborbital rocket is scheduled for liftoff at 9 a.m. EDT Tuesday from the company's Corn Ranch launch site 160 miles east of El Paso, Texas -- pending any weather or technical delays.

Blue Origin officials said New Shepard's safety is elevated by an abort method. At any point in the launch process, the capsule is capable of popping off the rocket and flying to a safe landing under its parachutes.

"Blue Origin has been flight-testing the New Shepard rocket and its redundant safety systems since 2012," Gary Lai, senior director of design for New Shepard, said in a video released by the company.

"The program has had 15 successful consecutive test missions, including three successful escape tests, showing the crew escape system can activate safely in any phase of flight," Lai said.

Blue Origin's method not only is safer, but also feels more like a true astronaut experience because it is a rocket with vertical liftoff, compared to Virgin Galactic, whose plane that launched last Sunday takes off on a runway, said John Spencer, a space architect and president of the non-profit Space Tourism Society.

"The Bezos approach is more into the ethos of spaceflight, you might say," Spencer said in an interview. "There's even a gantry tower and a walkway. There's a countdown, a liftoff."

The capsule has "the largest windows to have flown in space," according to a Blue Origins fact sheet.

Bezos' vision to build an infrastructure that will permanently enable space exploration is his ultimate goal, Spencer said.

Bezos has said he chose July 20 for the launch because it is the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969.

"Like Elon Musk, Bezos' long-term plan from Day 1 one was to inspire people and eventually build orbital rockets and facilities on the moon," Spencer said.

The Blue Origin trip, however, will be over quick, he noted. After reaching space, passengers will experience a few minutes of weightlessness and then return to Earth under parachutes. Most New Shepard flights last about 11 minutes.

British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic flights last about 90 minutes. The length of time spent in weightlessness is about the same for both.

Riding with Bezos will be his brother, Mark Bezos, 82-year-old aviator Wally Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen of the Netherlands. They will become the oldest and youngest people to fly in space, respectively, doing so on Blue Origin's first crewed flight.

"I want to go on this flight because it's a thing I wanted to do all my life. It's an adventure. It's a big deal for me. I invited my brother to come ... because we're closest friends," Bezos said in a June video posted on Instagram.

Bezos, who amassed a fortune from e-commerce giant Amazon, which he founded, bought the remote, 165,000 acre Corn Ranch in 2004 to make it a spaceport. Blue Origin has built several launchpads and engine testing stands there.

The historic launch is planned just nine days after Branson flew into space aboard his company's VSS Unity spaceplane, marking the first time the founder of a commercial space company did so.


Blue Origin also made a point on social media that its 59-foot-tall rocket will go at least a dozen miles higher than Branson's vehicle -- to the 62-mile Kármán line that much of the world defines as true outer space.

Space industry analysts will be watching closely to see which the public prefers, said Dallas Kasaboski, senior analyst with Northern Sky Research.

"Going to space will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for most passengers, so they're going to study the difference between a rocket and a spaceplane," Kasaboski said. "Blue Origin has some advantages, but some may want a more leisurely, longer trip."

The big unknown about Blue Origin is the cost of a ticket under normal operations, Kasaboski said. Regardless, both new space tourism companies have proved there is plenty of demand, he said.

Blue Origin held an auction to sell a seat on the trip, and the winning bid was $28 million. But the bidder, whose name was not released, could not fly because of what was described as a schedule conflict.

Daemen's father, the CEO of a private equity firm, put the teen on the trip when his bid, the second highest, was then selected for Tuesday's launch. The teenager has a pilot's license and plans to major in physics in college.


Bezos says he expects the space experience will be profound.

"To see the Earth from space, it changes you. It changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity. It's one Earth," he said.

Cannabis first domesticated 12,000 years ago: study

Issued on: 17/07/2021 

Cannabis has been used for millennia for textiles (THAT'S HEMP) and for its medicinal and recreational properties Fabrice COFFRINI AFP/File

Geneva (AFP)

Cannabis was first domesticated around 12,000 years ago in China, researchers found, after analysing the genomes of plants from across the world.

The study, published in the journal Science Advances on Friday, said the genomic history of cannabis domestication had been under-studied compared to other crop species, largely due to legal restrictions.

The researchers compiled 110 whole genomes covering the full spectrum of wild-growing feral plants, landraces, historical cultivars, and modern hybrids of plants used for hemp and drug purposes.

The study said it identified "the time and origin of domestication, post-domestication divergence patterns and present-day genetic diversity".

"We show that cannabis sativa was first domesticated in early Neolithic times in East Asia and that all current hemp and drug cultivars diverged from an ancestral gene pool currently represented by feral plants and landraces in China," it said.

Cannabis has been used for millennia for textiles and for its medicinal and recreational properties.

The evolution of the cannabis genome suggests the plant was cultivated for multipurpose use over several millennia.

The current highly-specialised hemp and drug varieties are thought to come from selective cultures initiated about 4,000 years ago, optimised for the production of fibres or cannabinoids.

The selection led to unbranched, tall hemp plants with more fibre in the main stem, and well-branched, short marijuana plants with more flowers, maximising resin production.

- 'New insights' -

The study was led by Luca Fumagalli of the University of Lausanne and involved scientists from Britain, China, India, Pakistan, Qatar and Switzerland.

"Our genomic dating suggests that early domesticated ancestors of hemp and drug types diverged from Basal cannabis", around 12,000 years ago, "indicating that the species had already been domesticated by early Neolithic times", it said.

"Contrary to a widely-accepted view, which associates cannabis with a Central Asian centre of crop domestication, our results are consistent with a single domestication origin of cannabis sativa in East Asia, in line with early archaeological evidence."

It said that some of the wild plants currently found in China represent the closest descendants of the ancestral gene pool from which hemp and marijuana varieties have since derived.#photo1

"East Asia has been shown to be an important ancient hot spot of domestication for several crop species... our results thus add another line of evidence," the study said.

The researchers said their study offered an "unprecedented" base of genomic resources for ongoing molecular breeding and functional research, both in medicine and in agriculture.

The study, they said, also "provides new insights into the domestication and global spread of a plant with divergent structural and biochemical products at a time in which there is a resurgence of interest in its use, reflecting changing social attitudes and corresponding challenges to its legal status in many countries."

© 2021 AFP

Iraq hospital heads abandon posts after fire tragedy

Issued on: 17/07/2021

Fire engulfs the Covid isolation unit of Al-Hussein hospital in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah Asaad NIAZI AFP


Nasiriyah (Iraq) (AFP)

Several hospital administrators in a southern Iraqi province have abandoned their posts, local authorities said Saturday, after arrest warrants were issued for senior staff following a deadly hospital fire in the city of Nasiriyah.

Saad al-Majid, health director of the southern governorate of Dhi Qar, told AFP that management teams of five hospitals had quit as "they're unwilling to assume responsibility" over any possible repeat of the tragedy.

At least 60 people were killed in the blaze late Monday at a temporary facility for Covid-19 patients at Nasiriyah's Al-Hussein Hospital in Dhi Qar fuelled by oxygen canisters exploding.

It was the second such tragedy in Iraq in three months.

In April, a fire at a Covid hospital in Baghdad -- also sparked by exploding oxygen cylinders -- killed 82 people, prompting the country's health minister to resign.

Local journalist Adnan Toame said the resignations among senior hospital staff at a time of public outrage were "embarrassing".

"They are shirking their responsibilities when they should instead be redoubling efforts to face up to this crisis," he said.

"This is a clear sign of the collapse of the health system in the governorate," chimed in Nasiriyah activist and journalist Adnan Dhafar.

On Saturday, a small fire broke out at Al-Haboubi hospital in Nasiriyah but it was quickly put out by fire crews, with no fatalities recorded.

Iraq -- whose oil-dependent economy is still recovering from decades of war and international sanctions -- has recorded more than 1.4 million coronavirus cases, including over 17,000 deaths.

Much of its health infrastructure is dilapidated, and investment in public services has been hamstrung by endemic corruption.

© 2021 AFP

DO I DETECT A THEME HERE

Gore queen Julia Ducournau wins Cannes top prize


Issued on: 17/07/2021 - 

Ducournau has a passion for all aspects of the human body

 Valery HACHE AFP


Cannes (France) (AFP)

French film director Julia Ducournau, who on Saturday won the Cannes festival's top prize for "Titane", developed a taste for skin-crawling bodily transformations early on in life thanks to her parents, both doctors.

Exploding into the spotlight at just 34 with her debut feature film "Raw", Ducournau quickly established herself as a singular and audacious filmmaker.

The coming-of-age tale with a gory twist, featuring a teenage vegetarian who finds she likes human flesh and blood, brought critics close to fainting when it was shown at the 2016 Cannes festival.


The impact of "Titane", about a young woman who has sex with cars and kills without a care, was much the same, with critics shielding their eyes during several scenes.

Getting a horror film short-listed for the top prize at Cannes was in itself a success, she told AFP during the first week of the festival.

"I've always wanted to bring genre cinema or outlandish films to mainstream festivals so this part of French movie production would stop being ostracised," she said.

"People need to understand that genre cinema is a way to talk about individual people and about our deepest fears and desires in a profound, raw and direct way."

The polished appearance of Ducournau, now 39, appears in stark contrast to the messy array of gore seen in her films.#photo1

The Paris-born daughter of a dermatologist father and a gynaecologist mother, both film lovers, suggests her fascination with some of the most disturbing aspects of the human body has deep roots.

"Even as a little girl, I would hear my parents talk about medical topics without taboo. That was their job. I liked to stick my nose in their books," she said while promoting "Raw".

Ducournau was visibly pleased at Cannes's "Titane" news conference when a critic compared her film to David Cronenberg's "Crash" and David Lynch's "Blue Velvet".

She also cites Brian de Palma, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Na Hong-jin as influences.

When she was only six, she watched "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" in secret and, growing up, devoured the chilling gothic stories of Edgar Allan Poe.

Ducournau was a brilliant student, earning a double degree for French literature and English before studying script-writing at the prestigious Femis film school in Paris.

Her 2011 short film "Junior", shortlisted for the Cannes festival's critics' prize, already showed a liking for physical transformation.

"Genre cinema is an obvious choice for me, in order to talk about the human body. The human body that changes and that opens up," she told Telerama magazine.

Caleb Landry Jones, best actor at Cannes for playing mass killer

Issued on: 17/07/2021

Mothball-blue stare: US actor Caleb Landry Jones at Cannes 

CHRISTOPHE SIMON AFP

Cannes (France) (AFP)

"You can be too good at your job," joked Caleb Landry Jones, who has fast developed a reputation for playing creepy characters.

The Texan farm boy with an avant-garde heart won best actor at Cannes on Saturday, and at just 31 is already seen as one of the most interesting and unusual actors in Hollywood.

"I can't do this, I am going to throw up," a clearly shaken Landry Jones said as he accepted the prize.

Unafraid to take on roles like that of Australian mass murderer Martin Bryant in "Nitram" -- which had rave reviews at Cannes -- his career has stretched from the "X-Men" to the mould-breaking horror flick "Get Out".

In that movie poking fun at liberal white America's racism he played the scary lacrosse-stick wielding brother.

He also turned up in indie gems at the Oscars like "The Florida Project" and "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri", acting as the catalyst for chaos.

- Run of good ol' boys -

In fact, Landry Jones has done such a run of racist good ol' boys, it was a shock to see him as Orphan Annie in gay drama "Stonewall".

"It's all about trusting the director, writer and the material," he told AFP, resplendent in a tangerine orange flared suit and tie in the style of 1970s Miami pimps.

Even his screen debut at 13 as a boy on a bike in the Coen brothers' "No Country for Old Men" was freaky -- "Mister, you got a bone sticking out of your arm."#photo1

His intense screen presence and what "Nitram" director Justin Kurzel calls his penchant for "completely inhabiting his characters, really living in them" also sets him apart.

He spent three months trying to get under Bryant's skin, a deeply disturbed young man who killed 35 people at Port Arthur in Tasmania in 1996.

Many critics were sceptical of another movie about a mass shooter, particularlyas many in Australia were appalled by the idea of glorifying Bryant.

But they were blown away by the intimate family drama about mental illness that exploded into the headlines.

Kurzel also stops the story in the seconds before Bryant starts shooting at the former convict colony.

- Mothball-blue stare -

Yet with his mothball-blue stare, and irises that seem to leak into the rest of his eyes, Landry Jones can sometimes come over as both distant and strange.

On the Cannes red carpet he pulled a few expressions for the cameras that seemed at odds with the sombre mood of the rest of the movie's team.#photo2

But the musician-turned-actor seems to embrace his own eccentricity and sense of difference.

"I've always been really into the extreme," he said of his passion for music. "My highs are very high and my lows are very low."

And he told AFP he doesn't ever let thoughts like "'Oh no, that is going to get me in trouble" stop him in his tracks.

- Sensitive portrayal -

With the memory of the Port Arthur massacre still raw, he said "it was very evident that people were going to be angry.

"Some people probably pegged the film to be a certain kind of movie... but it is a very sensitive piece and very respectfully made."

Being Texan helped with his role: "The film is in many ways about the Australian male. I found a lot of similarities with Texas. So I knew what that was."

Months of prep and Kurzel's notes were also invaluable.

"I really worked on the dialect for two months in Texas. But I arrived a month before we began shooting and if it wasn't for that I think I would have failed miserably."

"Some brutal feedback" from ordinary Aussies about his accent hit home.

For some time Landry Jones suffered the ultimate indignity of "apparently sounding like a Kiwi, a New Zealander," he laughed.

Kurzel also steered him to material "I have never gotten from a director before", including total immersion in 1990s Australian TV, including "Neighbours", the soap that launched Kylie Minogue on the world.

© 2021 AFP

CANNES 2021

In late surprise, Cannes screens powerful tribute to Hong Kong democracy protests

Issued on: 16/07/2021 - 
A still from Kiwi Chow's "The Revolution of Our Time", which screened at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday. © Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival

Text by: Benjamin DODMAN


In a last-minute addition to its line-up, the Cannes Film Festival has given a world premiere to Kiwi Chow’s “Revolution of Our Times”, a defiant chronicle of Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy protests, taking a diplomatic gamble on a sensitive topic that could provoke China’s ire.
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After ten days of blazing sunshine, the rain descended on the Cannes Film Festival on Friday – a tribute, no doubt, to the defiant protesters who fashioned a global symbol of freedom out of an unlikely item: the umbrella.

The humble brolly has been an emblem of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests since 2014, first as a means of expression and then as a shield against police cameras, pepper spray, gas canisters and rubber bullets. But even the sturdiest umbrella cannot protect the protagonists of Kiwi Chow’s shocking documentary “Revolution of Our Times”, which chronicles the massive street protests that gripped Hong Kong in 2019 and their brutal suppression by police.

Protesters use an umbrella as a shield during the turmoil in Hong Kong in September 2019. © Mehdi Chebil

The secretive, last-minute inclusion of Chow’s film – announced only as a “surprise documentary” in an email to the press on Thursday – had aroused plenty of curiosity, as well as speculation that Cannes might be heading for a showdown with China’s criticism-averse authorities. As it turns out, fears of a fallout with Beijing are entirely justified: “Revolution of Our Times” is a powerful tribute to the courage and resilience of Hongkongers battling for their freedom, and an uncompromising critique of Chinese threats to the city’s semi-autonomous status.

“We’re not playing a game with this surprise screening,” festival director Thierry Frémaux told the audience ahead of the film’s premiere, perhaps hoping to defuse a potential diplomatic spat. Frémaux said the documentary had reached Cannes at the 11th hour, adding: “We saw it, we loved it, and in accordance with Cannes’ long tradition of showing films about what’s happening in the world, we decided it was important to screen it.”

The film chronicles the turmoil that shook the former British colony between June and November 2019, starting with the authorities’ attempts to introduce an extradition bill with mainland China that effectively hollowed out the “one country-two systems” principle agreed upon by London and Beijing. It then charts the protest movement’s gradual shift from civil to uncivil disobedience, culminating in the bloody 12-day siege of the city’s Polytechnic University that sanctioned the protesters’ defeat.

Chow has amassed extensive footage of the marches and the protesters’ pitched battles with police, much of it chillingly graphic. His film also features a wealth of interviews with ordinary citizens involved in the movement, their voices altered and their faces hidden by masks or blurred in post-production. The film states that it was “made by Hongkongers” and that most people involved use pseudonyms in the credits. Endnotes stress that several people in the film are now in exile or in jail.

Protesters wear gas masks, helmets and other protective gear at a Hong Kong protest in September 2019. © Mehdi Chebil

“Over the past fifty years, Hongkongers have fought for freedom and democracy but have yet to succeed,” reads the film’s synopsis, published on the festival’s website. “In 2019, the Extradition Bill to China opened Pandora’s box, turning Hong Kong into a battlefield against the Chinese authoritarian rule.”

That Hongkongers broadly support the protests is immediately obvious from images of a monster demonstration bringing two million people – almost a third of the total population – to the city’s streets. But the film’s focus is really on the so-called “Valiant”, the overwhelmingly youthful, black-clad protesters who believe that attacking is the best defence. “Be water” is their motto, constantly changing shape and flow, and the film is perhaps most absorbing in its portrayal of their fluctuating tactics (some inspired by video games).

A visceral experience, “Revolution of Our Times” brings to the fore the texture of protest: the energizing kick of revolutionary action, the bonds of comradeship, the pain from pepper spray and rubber bullets, the agony of parents who cannot reach their children, and the anguish of girls whose menstrual blood runs black from inhaling too much tear gas. It also documents the dismay of Hongkongers at the rapid escalation of violence in a city unaccustomed to this level of brutality (French viewers might argue that the police clampdown was, in its early stages, less brutal than the roughly simultaneous crackdown on Yellow Vest protesters in France).

“Do you even realise your police force is out of control?” a human rights activist asks stoned-faced officials at a police briefing as bloodcurdling footage of an officer shooting an 18-year-old in the chest at point-blank range goes viral. While youths drive the protests, older generations look on aghast as their cherished city-state is altered beyond recognition. “In such a civilised place, how can the governance be so barbaric?” asks one veteran campaigner, appalled by the police’s growing violence.

Chow makes little attempt to give the police’s perspective; his film is very clear as to which side we should all be rooting for. It is both a tribute to the bravery and extraordinary resilience of youths in the face of brutal repression, and a plea for help. As one activist puts it, “Hong Kong is the frontier of the free world against totalitarian systems.”

Riot police fire tear gas at protesters in Hong Kong in September 2019. © Mehdi Chebil

The director expressed his gratitude to the Cannes Film Festival for screening his documentary. In an emailed statement, Chow wrote: “It is our honor to have the World Premiere of ‘Revolution of Our Times’, a film documenting the struggle of Hongkongers, at Cannes; and receive great attention. Hong Kong has been losing far more than anyone has expected, this good news will be a comfort to many Hongkongers who live in fear; it also shows that whoever fights for justice and freedom around the world, ARE with us! And Hongkongers are staying strong!”

It is safe to assume that Chow’s film will not enjoy an official screening in Hong Kong. Under a controversial National Security Law imposed by Beijing in 2020, the director and others involved in the film could even face arrest and prosecution.

As for Cannes organisers, they will now surely be waiting nervously for reactions from the Chinese government, which has moved swiftly in the past to punish instances of support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp. Beijing’s decision earlier this year to block all broadcasts of the 2021 Oscars ceremony has been widely interpreted as punishment for the nomination of the Hong Kong protest film “Do Not Split” in the best short documentary category.