BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
Ncuti Gatwa named first Black actor to take on leading 'Doctor Who' role


Ncuti Gatwa made his name in the hit Netflix series 'Sex Education'

 (AFP/CHRISTIAN MANG) 

Sun, May 8, 2022,

British actor Ncuti Gatwa, known for his role in popular series "Sex Education" will be the first Black actor to play the leading role in the cult BBC science fiction series, "Doctor Who", the channel announced Sunday.

The Rwandan-born Scottish actor, 29, will become the 14th incarnation of the Time Lord from 2023 as the series celebrates its 60th anniversary.

He takes over from British actress Jodie Whittaker, who was the first woman to play character known as "The Doctor" in the show.

"It feels really amazing. It's a true honour. This role is an institution and it's so iconic," Gatwa told BBC News.

"I feel very grateful to have had the baton handed over and I'm going to try to do my best," he added.

The adventures of the doctor -- a time travelling, humanoid alien who traverses the universe -- have maintained a loyal following since they were first aired in 1963.

Gatwa will work alongside screenwriter and producer Russell T Davies, creator of the series "It's a Sin", hugely popular in the UK.

It is a return for Davies, who stepped down as executive producer of the show in 2008 after he relaunched the series in 2005.

Whittaker took on the role in 2017 from Scottish actor Peter Capaldi, best known for playing a foul-mouthed spin doctor in the BBC satire "The Thick Of It".

She announced she would leave the role in July 2021.

mpa/raz/jj

Warhol Monroe portrait set to smash records at New York sales

2022/5/6 
© Agence France-Presse

A journalist takes photos during a press preview March 21, 2022 in New York

New York (AFP) - An Andy Warhol portrait of Marilyn Monroe worth an estimated $200 million headlines this month's spring sales in New York that collectors say are among the most anticipated ever.

Christie's expects Warhol's 1964 "Shot Sage Blue Marilyn" to become the priciest 20th century artwork when the auction house puts it under the hammer on Monday.

Not to be outdone, competitor Sotheby's is offering $1 billion of modern and contemporary art including the second helping of the famed Macklowe Collection, during its marquee week in May.

"The excitement is certainly unprecedented," Joan Robledo-Palop, a collector and CEO of Zeit Contemporary Art in New York City, told AFP, about the buzz surrounding this season's auctions.

The 40 inch (100 centimeter) by 40 inch silk-screen Warhol is part of a series of portraits the pop artist made of Monroe following her death from a drug overdose in August 1962.

They became known as the "Shot" series after a visitor to Warhol's "Factory" studio in Manhattan fired a gun at them, piercing the portraits which were later repaired.

Alex Rotter, head of 20th and 21st century art at Christie's, has called the portrait "the most significant 20th century painting to come to auction in a generation."

The current most expensive 20th century auctioned work is Picasso's "Women of Algiers," which fetched $179.4 million in 2015.

The auction record for a Warhol is the $104.5 million paid for "Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)" in 2013.

Other highlights offered by Christie's include Jean-Michel Basquiat's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict" (1982), expected to go for more than $30 million, and "Untitled (Shades of Red)" by Mark Rothko, tipped to fetch up to $80 million.

The auction house is also offering three Claude Monet oil on canvases that are predicted to sell for upwards of $30 million each.

- Rothko, Picasso, Richter -

"Every couple of decades you have a sale where the quality is so high that you don't see all of this at once normally. This season really grew into one of those unique moments," Rotter told AFP.

After selling the first batch of works from the Macklowe Collection -- the most expensive to hit the market at $600 million -- last fall, Sotheby's will auction the remaining 30 items when its sales open on May 16.

Highlights include Gerhard Richter's 1975 "Seascape," estimated at up to $35 million, and Rothko's "Untitled" from 1960 that has a high-end pre-sale estimate of $50 million.

Sotheby's said its modern evening auction of 19th and 20th century works, including by Pablo Picasso and Philip Guston, is its "most valuable" in the category in 15 years.

Picasso's "Femme nue couchée" is appearing at auction for the first time, and Sotheby's expects it to fetch more than $60 million. Other highlights include a Monet view of Venice tipped to fetch $50 million.

Brooke Lampley, head of sales for global fine art at Sotheby's, said she expects records to be broken across categories.

"The art market is very strong. That's why we see such an amazing array of works on offer this season," she told AFP.

Companies envision taxis flying above jammed traffic

2022/5/7
© Agence France-Presse

Companies such as Archer Aviation, whose eVTOL aircraft is seen here, are working on electric-powered aircraft that take off and land vertically like helicopters

San Francisco (AFP) - As urban traffic gets more miserable, entrepreneurs are looking to a future in which commuters hop into "air taxis" that whisk them over clogged roads.

Companies such as Archer, Joby and Wisk are working on electric-powered aircraft that take off and land vertically like helicopters then propel forward like planes.

"'The Jetsons' is definitely a reference that people make a lot when trying to contextualize what we are doing," Archer Vice President Louise Bristow told AFP, referring to a 1960s animated comedy about a family living in a high-tech future.

"The easiest way to think about it is a flying car, but that's not what we're doing."

What Archer envisions is an age of aerial ride-sharing, an "Uber or Lyft of the skies," Bristow said.

Neighborhood parking garage rooftops or shopping mall lots could serve as departure or arrival pads for electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.

Commuters would make it the rest of the way however they wish, even synching trips with car rideshare services such as Uber which owns a stake in Santa Cruz, California-based Joby.

Joby executives said on a recent earnings call that its first production model aircraft should be in the skies later this year.

That comes despite a Joby prototype crashing early this year while being tested at speeds and altitudes far greater than it would have to handle as part of an air taxi fleet.

Joby has declined to discuss details of the remotely piloted aircraft's crash, which occurred in an uninhabited area, saying it is waiting for US aviation regulators to finish an investigation.

"We were at the end of the flight test expansion campaign at test points well above what we expect to see in normal operations," Joby executive chairman Paul Sciarra told analysts.

"I'm really excited about where we are right now; we have demonstrated the full performance of our aircraft."

Its eVTOL aircraft have a maximum range of 150 miles (241 kilometers), a top speed of 200 miles per hour and a "low noise profile" to avoid an annoying din, the company said.

Joby has announced partnerships with SK Telecom and the TMAP mobility platform in South Korea to provide emissions-free aerial ridesharing.

"By cooperating with Joby, TMAP will become a platform operator that can offer a seamless transportation service between the ground and the sky," TMAP chief executive Lee Jong Ho said in a release.

Joby has also announced a partnership with Japanese airline ANA to launch air taxi service in Japan.

And Toyota has additionally joined the alliance, with an aim to explore adding ground transportation to such a service there, Joby said.
Rethinking required

Hurdles on the path include establishing infrastructure and adapting attitudes to make air taxis a part of everyday life.

"For mass adoption, people need to have a mindset change," Bristow said.

"Getting people to want to travel in a different way will take some rethinking."

The need for the change, though, is clear, she reasoned.

Roads are congested with traffic that wastes time, frays nerves and spews pollution.

"There is nowhere else for traffic to go," Bristow said.

"You have to go up."

Miami and Los Angeles are already exploring the potential of aerial ridesharing, and Archer is hoping to have a small air taxi service operating in at least one of those cities by the end of 2024.

"It's a monumental task that we're taking on," Bristow said.

"It's going to take a while before the infrastructure supports the mass expansion of what we're trying to do."

Archer last month announced that it teamed with United Airlines to create an eVTOL advisory committee.

The US airline has pre-ordered 200 Archer aircraft with an eye toward using them for "last-mile" transportation from airports, Bristow told AFP.

"Imagine flying from London to Newark, New Jersey, then getting in an Archer and being deposited somewhere in Manhattan," Bristow said.
More time for life

Silicon Valley startup Xwing specializes in making standard aircraft capable of flying safely without pilots, with an aim of turning commuting by air into a cheaper and more efficient way to travel.

"We're strong believers here that the industry is going through a pretty dramatic transformation," Xwing chief and founder Marc Piette told AFP.

"In a few years you'll start seeing taxi networks of electric aircrafts regionally or on long hauls and it's going to be quite a different landscape."

Thousands of regional airports used mostly for recreation could become part of aerial commute networks, air mobility consultant Scott Drennan told AFP.

To Drennan, the primary reason for taking to the skies is to "give people back their time."

RENT HIKES=INFLATION

Facing soaring rents, some US tenants are fighting back

2022/5/7 
© Agence France-Presse

Anh-Thu Nguyen of Brooklyn, New York has sued her landlord after being notified by the new owner that her lease was ending

New York (AFP) - Before the start of each month, Anh-Thu Nguyen and her two roommates send rental checks to their landlord. A few days later, the checks are mailed back.

The bizarre ritual began soon after the March 2021 purchase of Nguyen's Brooklyn building by a shadowy real estate firm called Greenbrook Partners, which told residents they had to leave by June 30.

Some neighbors moved out, but Nguyen and tenants from four other units sued the financially connected Greenbrook, one of several investor-backed rental housing firms to draw scrutiny in Washington.

"We have to fight back," said Nguyen, who has helped organize tenants in other buildings that belong to Greenbrook, which has more than 150 properties in Brooklyn and Queens, most bought during the pandemic.

"This has been my home for 13 plus years. It's a wonderful community and I want to stay here... it's also the right thing to do," said Nguyen, 39, a trained attorney who works on labor organizing for an NGO.

Nguyen and other activists back a pending tenant protection bill in the New York state legislature. The battle comes as rising rent adds to today's historic inflation surge, with horror stories abounding of landlords in the unregulated portion of New York's rental market seeking increases of 30 percent or higher.

"The market has bounced back, and that has led to rent increases and lease renewals that are really burdensome for tenants," said Charles McNally, director of external affairs at the Furman Center, a New York University urban policy research organization.

"It's a really difficult market for renters, and the inflationary pressures for owners are real as well."

'Suboptimal tenant'

Greenbrook was one of the actors highlighted in a February event organized by Senate Democrats, where Nguyen described herself as a "suboptimal tenant" for such firms.

"Their goal is maximizing profit, not the stability that comes with a long-term tenant," she told the panel.

Housing experts told senators that a frequently changing cast of shell companies and subsidiaries appearing on official ownership documents hinders accountability for tenants.

They also said some of the firms target traditionally non-white areas where home values have risen steeply.

The rental firms' defenders say restrictions on landlords can discourage needed investment and that the industry is being scapegoated for the housing affordability problem, a complex issue with many factors.

They also point to estimates that Wall Street-backed firms comprise a tiny stake of the US rental housing stock -- figures that housing experts say are based on outdated pre-pandemic data.

Recent news reports abound of the shift in cities such as Atlanta and Jacksonville, where Wall Street-backed rental firms snap up available stock, pricing out some first-time homeowners.

'Good cause eviction'

Greenbrook tenants have also garnered support from leading New York politicians, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and state Senator Jabari Brisport, who led a rally last month where Greenbrook was booed.

"Fight, fight, fight! Housing is a human right," the group chanted in support of "good cause eviction" legislation, which would limit evictions to cases where tenants don't pay rent or behave egregiously. The bill would also limit rent increases on apartments with market-based leases.

Many in real estate oppose the legislation, including Bryan Liff, who is selling two condo units rather than risk renting them under such a bill, which would come on top of soaring costs during the pandemic that he says are driving out mom-and-pop landlords.

"I'm not willing to take the risk that the state will basically give away our property," said Liff, a 50-year-old software engineer, who also owns an eight-apartment Harlem building in which he rents units.

The rally was held outside the Brooklyn home of Aneta Molenda, who also is in housing limbo with no active lease after fighting Greenbrook's 50 percent rent increase.

"I feel incredibly insecure in my housing situation," Molenda told AFP.

Greenbrook Partners has generally avoided comment and didn't respond to multiple queries from AFP.

The company's website says it targets "poorly maintained, undermanaged and undercapitalized assets located in growth-oriented and transitional submarkets of New York City."

Greenbrook and its affiliates own 153 properties, according to a New York City real estate database.

The properties are currently listed under "Freestone Property Group," after previously appearing under the name Greg Fournier, a principal at Greenbrook. Nguyen believes Freestone is a Greenbrook subsidiary.

As a private company, Greenbrook does not release its financial statements. Real estate trade press has described partnerships with the private equity behemoth Carlyle Group and the British investment company NW1 Partners.

Neither Carlyle nor NW1 responded to AFP request for comment.

CANADIANS DIED TOO 

Families of crash victims challenge Boeing settlement in US court
2022/5/3
© Agence France-Presse

Catherine Berthet (L) whose daughter died in the Boeing 737 MAX crash in Ethiopia, arrives at court in Fort Worth, Texas, to challenge the aircraft maker's settlement deal with the US Department of Justice

Fort Worth (United States) (AFP) - The families of victims of the two Boeing 737 MAX crashes in October 2018 and March 2019 asked a Texas judge Tuesday to overturn a $2.5-billion settlement between the aircraft manufacturer and the US government.

Under that agreement, Boeing admitted to having committed fraud in exchange for the Department of Justice dropping some of the proceedings against it over the deadly crashes of Lion Air in Indonesia and Ethiopian Airlines, which killed 346 people total and caused the MAX to be grounded globally for 20 months.

This January 7, 2021 arrangement was the focus of a court hearing Tuesday in Fort Worth, Texas.

"They messed up by making the crime fraud rather than manslaughter," said Catherine Berthet, a French woman who lost her 28-year-old daughter when the Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed near Addis Ababa on March 10, 2019.

"We believe that the rights of the victims' families have not been respected," she told AFP. "We have not been consulted. We ask to be heard."

The January 2021 agreement included a $500 million compensation fund for victims' relatives, $1.77 billion in compensation to the airlines and a $243 million criminal fine.

Boeing has admitted that two of its employees had misled a group within the Federal Aviation Authority that was to prepare training for pilots in using Boeing's new MCAS flight software, which was implicated in both crashes.

"The judge listened carefully and I think had a lot of concerns about how was it that the Justice Department can seal this agreement from the families," said Paul Cassell, lawyer for the families in the audience.

Relatives of the victims are now hoping for a quick decision from the Fort Worth judge.

"It's been three years and I never go to sleep before four or five in the morning," Berthet said. "I still have panic attacks. There are things I don't do anymore. There are films that I can no longer see, music that I can no longer listen to."

"I would like to see that the US Department of Justice is responsible enough to make sure that corporations don't get away with murder," said Paul Njoroge, who lost his 33-year-old wife, his children aged nine months, four and six, as well as his mother-in-law in the Ethiopia crash.

Collapse at French cliffs scaled by US troops on D-Day

2022/5/6 
© Agence France-Presse

Part of the Pointe du Hoc cliffs -- site of a daring vertical assault by US Army Rangers on D-Day in 1944 -- has collapsed on France's northern coast

Cricqueville-en-Bessin (France) (AFP) - A large section of the Pointe du Hoc cliffs has collapsed on France's northern coast, damaging the site of a daring vertical assault by US Army Rangers on D-Day in 1944.

"Part of the outcrop overlooking the English Channel collapsed" on Friday, the American Battle Monuments Commission, which has cared for the site since 1956, said in a statement.

"No one was injured in the landslide, which fell into the sea, and there is no risk for visitors," it added.

An AFP photographer saw around 100 tourists present on a sunny day at the site in Normandy in northern France.

A force of 225 rangers scaled the cliffs on June 6, 1944 to destroy German artillery emplacements that threatened the Allied amphibious landings.

Ascending the 25-metre (82-foot) cliff face in foul weather and under German fire, just 90 of the attackers escaped unharmed.

"The base of the cliffs has become increasingly fragile over time," said Scott Desjardins, superintendent of Normandy American cemetery and the Pointe du Hoc.

"We continue to study the situation in order to find ways to mitigate the risk and preserve the site," he added.

Normandy conservation official Regis Leymarie said that collapses had been expected at the site as "these cliffs have been eroding since they were created".

"About 12 years ago, we agreed with the Americans and the French state that reinforcing the foot of the cliff should aim to slow the erosion but never to stop it," he added, saying that already by then "the site was no longer as it was in 1944".

Around 500,000 people each year visit the Pointe du Hoc, one of the most famous sites of World War II's massive D-Day landings.

The arrivals were the first step to freeing France and western Europe from Nazi German occupation.

CAPITALI$M IS ADDICTION
Biographer says Mickelson had $40mn in gambling losses in four years

2022/5/5 
© Agence France-Presse

Six-time major winner Phil Mickelson plays a shot at the US PGA Tour's Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines in January 2022

Los Angeles (AFP) - US federal auditors probing Phil Mickelson’s role in an insider trading case found he had gambling losses of more than $40 million from 2010 to 2014, according to an excerpt from Alan Shipnuck’s forthcoming biography of the US golfer.

Shipnuck posted the excerpt from the unauthorized biography on the Firepit Collective website on Thursday.

The book, "Phil: The Rip-Roaring (and Unauthorized!) Biography of Golf’s Most Colorful Superstar," is due to be released on May 17.

That's two days before the start of the PGA Championship, where Mickelson is the defending champion.

Mickelson became the oldest major winner in golf history when he won the PGA at Kiawah Island last year at the age of 50, but it's not yet known if he will defend the title at Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Mickelson has not played since an uproar in February followed Shipnuck's publication of the player's explosive remarks concerning the Saudi-backed LIV golf tour spearheaded by Greg Norman.

The six-time major champion called the Saudi partners "scary," citing the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

But he said he was willing to work with them if the breakaway tour provided "leverage" in efforts to force the US PGA Tour to alter policies that Mickelson said rob players of deserved money-making opportunities.

Mickelson was a relief defendant in a 2016 criminal insider trading case that sent gambler Billy Walters to prison.

Mickelson wasn't charged, but repaid almost $1 million made in the deal.

In the excerpt posted Thursday, Shipnuck, citing a source with direct access to the documents, writes that government auditors working the case investigated Mickelson's finances over four years from 2010 to 2014.

"In those prime earning years, Mickelson’s income was estimated to be just north of $40 million a year," Shipnuck wrote. "That's an obscene amount of money, but once he paid his taxes (including the California tariffs he publicly railed against), he was left with, what, low-20s? Then he had to cover his plane and mansion(s), plus his agent, caddie, pilots, chef, personal trainer, swing coaches and sundry others.

"Throw in all the other expenses of a big life -- like an actual T. Rex skull for a birthday present -- and that leaves, what, $10 million? Per the government audit, that's roughly how much Mickelson averaged in annual gambling losses."

Mickelson's management company confirmed in April that he had sought a release from the US PGA Tour to play in the first event of the LIV tour, the LIV Golf Invitational near London June 9-11.

But in a statement Steve Loy, co-president of Sportfive management, stressed the player had not yet confirmed his participation.

Activists urge ad boycott if Musk turns Twitter toxic
2022/5/3
© Agence France-Presse

Twitter makes most of its money from ads, which could flee the platform if it allows vitriol and misinformation to flourish once in the hands of billionaire Elon Musk

San Francisco (AFP) - Activist groups called on Twitter advertisers Tuesday to boycott the service if it opens the gates to abusive and misinformative posts with billionaire Elon Musk as its owner.

The Tesla chief's $44-billion deal to buy the global messaging platform must still get the backing of shareholders and regulators, but he has voiced enthusiasm for dialing back content moderation to a legal minimum and no longer banning people for using the platform to instigate real-world harm.

Facebook accused of blocking Australian health sites

2022/5/6 
© Agence France-Presse

Facebook parent Meta says blocking Australian government websites was a glitch, not a negotiating tactic, when it was lobbying against a law there in 2021

San Francisco (AFP) - A whistleblower group is accusing Facebook of deliberately blocking websites for Australian hospitals and emergency services as part of a negotiating tactic last year.

The social network owned by Silicon Valley tech giant Meta was lobbying to weaken a proposed law requiring it to pay news providers in Australia when it blocked all such content from its platform in February 2021.

But the algorithm also blocked other websites in what the company maintained was an accident, telling AFP on Friday that "any suggestion to the contrary is categorically and obviously false."

"We intended to exempt Australian government pages from restrictions in an effort to minimize the impact of this misguided and harmful legislation," a Meta spokesperson said.

"When we were unable to do so as intended due to a technical error, we apologized and worked to correct it."

However, US-based organization Whistleblower Aid alleged it was actually a Meta ploy in filings with the US Department of Justice and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, first reported in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

The organization said in a statement that Facebook's five-day blackout of news content providers had deliberately "overblocked" local governments, health services and other sites that were providing support for vulnerable people.

The intention was to force the government to weaken the proposed law, the group said.

"This wasn't just an example of a corporate actor behaving recklessly," said Whistleblower Aid chief Libby Liu.

"Facebook intentionally put lives at risk to protect its bottom line."

Shortly after the blackout, Australia passed a law forcing Facebook to negotiate with news content providers, but politicians watered down some of the most onerous proposals.

Online content fuelling divisions and global tensions, media watchdog says

Unregulated online content has spread disinformation and propaganda that have amplified political divisions worldwide, fanned international tensions and even contributed to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a media watchdog warned Tuesday.

© Petras Malukas, AFP

Reporters Without Borders said democratic societies are increasingly fractured by social media spreading disinformation and more opinion media pursuing a so-called "Fox News model", referring to the controversial right-wing television network in the United States.

At the same time, despotic and autocratic regimes that tightly control information in their societies are using their "asymmetric" position to wage "propaganda wars" against democracies and fuel divisions within them, the watchdog said in the 2022 edition of its annual World Press Freedom Index.

"Polarisation on these two levels is fuelling increased tension," Reporters Without Borders, widely known by its French acronym RSF, said in a five-page summary.

It noted Russia, where state-run media overwhelmingly dominate and independent outlets are increasingly stifled, invaded Ukraine following a propaganda war.

"The creation of media weaponry in authoritarian countries eliminates their citizens' right to information but is also linked to the rise in international tension, which can lead to the worst kind of wars," RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire said.

He added the "Fox News-isation" of Western media also poses a "fatal danger for democracies because it undermines the basis of civil harmony and tolerant public debate".

Deloire urged countries to adopt appropriate legal frameworks to protect democratic online information spaces.

 
Record 'very bad'

The situation is "very bad" in a record 28 countries, according to this year's ranking of 180 countries and regions based on the degree of freedom enjoyed by journalists.

The lowest ranked were North Korea (180th), Eritrea (179th) and Iran (178th), with Myanmar (176th) and China (175th) close behind.

Russia (155th) and ally Belarus (153rd) were also on its red list of the most repressive.

Hong Kong's position plummeted dozens of places to 148th, reflecting Beijing's efforts to use "its legislative arsenal to confine its population and cut it off from the rest of the world", RSF said.

Nordic countries Norway, Denmark and Sweden again topped the index, serving as a democratic models "where freedom of expression flourishes".

The NGO commended Moldova (40th) and Bulgaria (91st) this year due to government changes and "the hope it has brought for improvement in the situation for journalists".

But it noted "oligarchs still own or control the media" in both.

Media polarisation was "feeding and reinforcing internal social divisions in democratic societies" such as the United States (42nd).

That trend was even starker in "illiberal democracies" such as Poland (66th), a European Union country where suppression of independent media was also noted by RSF.

The NGO, launched in 1985 and which has published the yearly index since 2002, has become a thorn in the side of autocratic and despotic regimes around the world.

This year's listing was developed with a new methodology redefining press freedom and using five new indicators -- political context, legal framework, economic context, sociocultural context, and security -- to reflect its "complexity".