Nearly 90, but opera legend Kabaivanska is still calling tune

Sofia (Bulgaria) (AFP) – Raina Kabaivanska was one of the greatest sopranos of her generation -- arguably the greatest Tosca after Maria Callas. And even at 89, the Bulgarian singer is still a force in opera.

Issued on: 14/10/2024 - 

Opera legend Raina Kabaivanska teaches a young singer at her masterclass in Sofia 

© Nikolay DOYCHINOV / AFP

She may have given her last stage performance a decade ago, but her influence continues through the young stars she mentors through her annual masterclass in Sofia.

"When my career ended, I had this inner necessity to continue to be in the music," Kabaivanska -- who turns 90 in December -- told AFP.

"My life is music. Music gives you energy and inspiration and, above all, forms you as a person."

As her students took turns rehearsing their arias for this year's final gala concert in Sofia, Kabaivanska lip synched and gestured along in the shadows of the darkened hall.

Then suddenly, she left her seat, her arms delicately dancing to guide the singer through the most difficult parts.

"I am very old and absolutely I don't hide this. But this gives me great power to work with the young," Kabaivanska laughed.

"I have this ambition -- to set them on the right path."

Pavarotti duos

Kabaivanska famously sang at the funeral of her friend the singer Luciano Pavarotti in 2007

 © POOL / AFP

Born in 1934 in the Black Sea city of Burgas, Kabaivanska learned piano as a child. Then a teacher at her high school in Sofia noticed her voice and included her in the choir.

She made her debut at the Sofia Opera in 1957 and two years later moved to Italy, where she performed at Milan's famous La Scala opera house, quickly making a name for herself.

She went on to bedazzle audiences around the world making roles such as Tosca and Madame Butterfly her own and sharing the stage with Spain's Placido Domingo and Italy's Luciano Pavarotti, a close friend and collaborator.

His family asked her to open the great tenor's funeral mass in 2007 in Modena, with Kabaivanska giving a particularly moving rendition of Verdi's "Ave Maria".

Strikingly beautiful, Kabaivanska was also a talented actor.

George Tekev was spellbound when as a nine-year-old he watched her play Queen Elisabeth in Verdi's "Don Carlos" half a century ago.

Twenty-five years later the academic invited her to give a masterclass at the New Bulgarian University (NBU).

"First and foremost, she is very inspiring, and she is a heavyweight. Maintaining such high standards requires a lot of effort," said the NBU's executive director of their long collaboration.

'Born to sing'

'I had this inner need to continue in music': Bulgarian opera legend Raina Kabaivanska, who will soon turn 90 

© Nikolay DOYCHINOV / AFP

More than 200 students from all over the world have passed through the masterclasses Kabaivanska has taught every autumn since 2001 in Sofia.

Nearly half have continued to study with her at different schools in Italy with scholarships from a fund bearing her name.

Among those that have passed through "Kabaivanska school" are sopranos Maria Agresta from Italy, South Korean Vittoria Yeo and Ukrainian Sofia Soloviy, Italian tenor Andrea Care and South Korean baritone Simon Lim.

This year more than 90 singers turned up at the auditions for just 14 places.

"What is required is talent. Talent says it all," said Kabaivanska.

"Talent is not just natural abilities but also a capability to see the world in a different way. You are simply born to sing."

Even for the most talented, it is not easy to make a living "because art no longer holds the importance with the public that it had years ago," she said.

For student Baia Saganelidze, a 30-year-old mezzo-soprano from Georgia, the opera star "is teaching us everything -- how to sing, how to live, how to bring a certain role to the public."

"We always think about characters, the composer, every detail is discussed with her," Saganelidze told AFP.

Another student, Romanian bass Andrei Miclea, 25, said it was a "great honour" to be in the class.

"We learn from the maestra but we also learn from each other. We have a saying in this job -- 'You have to steal from everybody.'"

© 2024 AFP

Raina Kabaivanska Gorgeously sings Verdi's Greatest Soprano Aria

    

Spectacular Raina Kabaivanska delivers Fausta's final Aria (Donizettian Masterpiece) and Cabaletta

 

Raina Kabaivanska - Live in Concert  

LUGANO 1987

THE ULTIMATE NIMBY

'Not viable': Barcelona turns against surging tourism

Barcelona (AFP) – Tourists are flocking to Barcelona in ever increasing numbers, fueling anger among locals who complain that mass tourism is driving up housing prices and overwhelming public spaces in Spain's second city.


Issued on: 14/10/2024 -

Visitors jam Antoni Gaudi's architectural masterpeice Park Guell, one of Barcelona's most visited sites © Josep LAGO / AFP

Known for its Belle Epoque architecture, museums and beaches, Barcelona receives an average of 170,000 visitors per day according to municipal figures, and tourism accounts for roughly 13.5 percent of the city's gross domestic product.

At the same time, tourism is now the third most worrying problem for Barcelona's 1.6 million residents according to a municipal survey, mirroring a trend seen in other tourism hotspots across Europe.

"There is an excessive economic dependence on the tourist sector," said Daniel Pardo of the Assembly of Neighbourhoods, adding he was disappointed that after the pandemic there has been an "aggressive" rebound in tourism in the city of around 1.6 million residents.

Thousands of people marched through the streets of Barcelona on Sunday to protest against the city's tourism-centric economic model, as well as the America's Cup sailing competition it is hosting this year.

Graffiti reading "Tourist go home" in English has appeared in multiple spots across the city and in July some participants at a protest against overtourism sprayed people they identified as tourists with water pistols.

Politicians and business leaders condemned the action but Pardo downplayed it, calling it "anecdotal".

"Violence is being expelled from your neighbourhood, extreme labour exploitation, that even if you can stay in your neighbourhood you see how your environment is gradually disappearing," he added.
'Uncontrolled tourism'

Tourists crowd the surroundings of Casa Batllo building in Barcelona, where there is a backlash from local residents against overtourism 

© Josep LAGO / AFP

Tenants of a building near Barcelona's main train station are locked in a legal battle with the owner of property who wants to convert its 120 flats into short-term holiday rentals.

More than 30 flats have already been converted, in what critics say is an example of how mass tourism contributes to a housing shortage and changes the nature of residential neighbourhoods.

"We have had cases of tourists throwing up on neighbours from one balcony to another. Noise problem because they hold parties, the smell of marijuana," said Pamela Battigambe, a longtime resident of the building.

She fears she will be forced to leave Barcelona where rents have jumped 68 percent over the last decade.

"We are not against tourism per se. We are against this form of uncontrolled tourism," Battigambe said.

Barcelona's Socialist mayor, Jaume Collboni, announced in June that the city will scrap the licences of the roughly 10,000 flats currently approved as short-term rentals by the end of 2028 in a bid to rein in soaring housing costs.

Barcelona city hall is considering reducing the number of cruise ships that can dock at its port, pictured here, to address concerns from locals over high numbers of tourist arrivals 

© Josep LAGO / AFP

Barcelona's tourist flats association Apartur has called this a "disguised expropriation" and said it will seek one billion euros in compensation if the measure goes ahead.

Barcelona deputy mayor Jordi Valls said the city is exploring other measures to better manage the tourism sector, such as reducing the number of cruise ships that can stop at the port, and is "trying to grow and develop other activities" to diversify the economy.
Traditional shops vanish

But with city hall also backing a planned expansion of Barcelona's airport, critics charge the measures are not enough.

"We are not tackling ‘overtourism’ from the point of view of degrowth or stopping tourism, but rather we are trying to disperse it over time and territory," said University of Barcelona geography professor Anna Torres Delgado.

"We should start planning tourism development strategies not only by looking at economic indicators, but also at social and environmental ones."

The surge in tourism in Barcelona comes as Spain -- the world's most visited country after France -- is on track this year to smash last year's record for international tourist arrivals of 85.1 million.

Near Barcelona's iconic Sagrada Familia basilica, Jordi Gimeno's haberdashery is one of the few traditional shops left in the neighbourhood.

"There are businesses that tourism is not interested in," he added.

Standing in front of the basilica, Dutch tourist Jolijn said "in Amsterdam we have the same problem".

"People live their lives differently now than before when there was not so much tourism," she said.

© 2024 AFP

Nepali teenager hailed as hero after climbing world's 8,000m peaks

"We are not just guides. We are trailblazers."

Kathmandu (AFP) – Cheering crowds hailed an 18-year-old Nepali mountaineer as a hero as he returned home Monday after breaking the record for the youngest person to summit all 14 of the world's 8,000-metre peaks.

Issued on: 14/10/2024 - 

Nepal mountaineer Nima Rinji Sherpa waves upon his arrival in Kathmandu after breaking the record for the youngest person to summit all 14 of the world's 8,000-metre peaks 

© Prakash MATHEMA / AFP


Nima Rinji Sherpa reached the summit of Tibet's 8,027-metre-high (26,335 feet) Shisha Pangma on October 9, completing his mission to stand on the world's highest peaks.

On Monday, he returned from China to Nepal's capital Kathmandu, where scores waited to see him.

"I am feeling very happy," he told AFP, draped in traditional Buddhist scarves and garlands of marigold flowers, as he emerged to loud cheers at the airport.

"Thank you so much everyone", he said to his supporters, beaming a wide grin.

Sherpa hugged his family while others rushed to offer him scarves and flowers. He later waved to the crowd out of a car sunroof, while proudly holding the national flag.

Nepal's climbing community also welcomed several others who returned after completing the summit of 14 peaks.

Nepali mountaineer Nima Rinji Sherpa was greeted by his family; summiting all 14 "eight-thousanders" is considered the peak of mountaineering aspirations 

© Prakash MATHEMA / AFP

Summiting all 14 "eight-thousanders" is considered the peak of mountaineering aspirations, with all the peaks located in the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges, straddling Nepal, Pakistan, Tibet and India.

Climbers cross "death zones" where there is not enough oxygen in the air to sustain human life for long periods.

Italian climber Reinhold Messner first completed the feat in 1986, and only around 50 others have successfully followed in his footsteps.

Many elite climbers have died in the pursuit.
'Trailblazers'

All of the mountains are in the Himalayas and neighbouring Karakoram range, which spans Nepal, China, India and Pakistan.

Nima Rinji Sherpa broke the record for the youngest person to summit all 14 of the world's 8,000-metre peaks 

© - / 14 Peaks Expedition/AFP

In the last few years, mountaineers are expected to reach the "true summit" of every mountain, which many climbers of the previous generation had missed.

Sherpa is no stranger to the mountains, hailing from a family of record-holding climbers, who also now run Nepal's largest mountaineering expedition company.

Raised in bustling Kathmandu, Sherpa initially preferred to play football or shoot videos.

But two years ago, he put his camera down to pursue mountaineering.

Sherpa, who already holds multiple records from his ascents of dozens of peaks, started high-altitude climbing at the age of 16, by climbing Mount Manaslu in August 2022.

Nepali climbers -- usually ethnic Sherpas from the valleys around Everest -- are considered the backbone of the climbing industry in the Himalayas.

They carry the majority of equipment and food, fixing ropes and repairing ladders.

Long in the shadows as supporters of foreign climbers, they are slowly being recognised in their own right.

The world's tallest peaks © John SAEKI / AFP

"I want to show the younger generation of Sherpas that they can rise above the stereotype of being only support climbers and embrace their potential as top-tier athletes, adventurers, and creators," he said in a statement soon after his final summit.

"We are not just guides. We are trailblazers."

In recent years, climbers like Sherpa have set record after record, and are hopeful their feats will inspire the next generation of Nepali mountaineers.

The record was previously held by another Nepali climber, Mingma Gyabu 'David' Sherpa. He achieved it in 2019, at the age of 30.

© 2024 AFP

India's capital bans fireworks to curb air pollution

New Delhi (AFP) – India's capital New Delhi ordered Monday a "complete ban" on fireworks in a bid to curb air pollution in a city where levels are regularly ranked among the worst in the world.


Issued on: 14/10/2024 - 
I

ndian workers prepare fireworks ready for the Hindu festival of Diwali on November 1 -- but the capital New Delhi has ordered a complete ban to try to curb air pollution 

© R. Satish BABU / AFP

The ban is the toughest in a string of restrictions on the hugely popular firecrackers -- rules that have been widely flouted.

"There will be a complete ban on the manufacturing, storage, selling... and bursting of all kinds of firecrackers," the Delhi Pollution Control Committee said in a statement.

The order was made in view of the "public interest to curb high air pollution", it said.

It comes two weeks before Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights on November 1, where many see fireworks as integral to celebrations.

The spectacular and colourful festival symbolises the victory of light over darkness, a celebration of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi.

Previous restrictions in the megapolis of roughly 30 million people were routinely ignored.

Police are often reluctant to act against violators, given the strong religious sentiments attached to the crackers by Hindu devotees.

New Delhi is blanketed in acrid smog every autumn, primarily blamed on stubble burning by farmers in the neighbouring regions, but the surge in fireworks around Diwali compounds the problem.

Levels of fine particulate matter -- cancer-causing microparticles known as PM2.5 pollutants that enter the bloodstream through the lungs -- often hit more than 30 times the World Health Organization's danger limits in the city.

A Lancet report in 2020 said almost 17,500 people died in Delhi in 2019 because of air pollution.

In the past, fireworks were smuggled in across state boundaries or were available under the counter.

Residents then launched the noisy explosives in the middle of the night or the early hours of the morning to avoid trouble.

But this year, Delhi's city authorities urged state police to enforce the ban, asking them to submit "daily action taken reports".

The ban runs until the end of 2024.

© 2024 AFP

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

French far-right’s Le Pen faces questioning in Paris court in fake EU jobs trial

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen is set to be questioned by judges at a Paris court Monday as she and her National Rally party stand trial over the suspected embezzlement of European Parliament funds. Le Pen has denied the charges.


Issued on: 14/10/2024 - 

In this file photo, French far-right leader Marine Le Pen (C) leaves a courtroom with lawyer Alexandre Varaut (L) at a Paris court house amid a trial over suspected embezzlement of European public funds on September 30, 2024. 

© Alain Jocard, AFP

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, charged with embezzling European Parliament funds, will be questioned at her trial for the first time on Monday in a case that could thwart her presidential ambitions.

Le Pen and two dozen other National Rally (RN) party chiefs are accused of creating fake jobs to embezzle European Parliament money.

Possible sanctions include jail as well as a decade-long ban from public office, which could wreck Le Pen's hopes of succeeding President Emmanuel Macron in a 2027 election.

Le Pen has addressed the trial since it opened on September 30, but so far has not been subjected to direct questioning.

Read moreWhat does the EU embezzlement trial mean for Le Pen and the French far right?

Le Pen, 56, has denied the charges, saying she had "not broken any rules" and that she was "very calm".

Last week, she accused the court's presiding judge, Benedicte de Perthuis, of employing a "tone of partiality".

Three-time presidential candidate Le Pen at the start of the trial told the Paris criminal court: "I will answer all the questions that the court wants to ask me."

The RN this year achieved record scores in European elections, performed strongly in France's legislative vote and could decide the fate of Prime Minister Michel Barnier's new minority government.

In the dock are the RN party, nine former MEPs including Le Pen and party vice-president Louis Aliot, spokesman Julien Odoul -- one of nine former parliamentary assistants -- and four RN staff.

The alleged fake jobs system, which was first flagged in 2015, covers parliamentary assistant contracts between 2004 and 2016.

Prosecutors say the assistants worked exclusively for the party outside parliament.

10:24

Many were unable to describe their day-to-day work, and some never met their supposed MEP boss or set foot in the parliament building.

A bodyguard, a secretary, Le Pen's chief of staff and a graphic designer were all allegedly hired under false pretences.

Misuse of public funds can be punished with a million-euro ($1.1 million) fine, a 10-year jail term and a 10-year ban from public office.

"The main risk for the president of the RN group in the French National Assembly is not financial, but political," said French daily Le Monde last month.

If convicted, Le Pen would be able to lodge an appeal, which could delay the final verdict until after the 2027 election, thus allowing her to stand.

European Parliament authorities said the legislature had lost three million euros ($3.4 million) through the jobs scheme.

The RN has paid back one million euros, which it insists is not an admission of guilt.

Prosecutors have said that Le Pen and her father, former party leader Jean-Marie, both signed off on a "centralised system" that picked up pace in 2014.

Now 96, Le Pen senior is among those charged but has been deemed not fit to stand trial.

(AFP)

Back in the news

Afghanistan is creeping back into America’s line of sight.

ANOTHER WAR THEY LOST IGNOBLY


Huma Yusuf 

Published October 14, 2024

DAWN

T

“YOU can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” Those famous lyrics are going to haunt American officials after next month’s US presidential elections as Washington again considers its Afghanistan problem. How it will broach this problem is unsurprisingly of interest to Pakistan’s establishment. But rather than endure a case of déjà vu, could our leaders pitch a new approach?

Just under 24 million Afghans require humanitarian assistance, 48 per cent of them live below the poverty line, and Afghan women’s rights are so decimated that women are now prohibited from even speaking in public. Over the past three years, these factors have not been sufficient to draw global attention to Afghanistan. The world remains focused on the conflict in the Middle East, Russia’s posturing, and US-China rivalry.

And yet, Afghanistan is creeping back into America’s line of sight, and the recent arrest of an Afghan national in Oklahoma for allegedly planning Election Day attacks in the name of IS will put the issue into centre focus. The man was apprehended while trying to stockpile weapons after trawling through online IS propaganda. His detention is a reminder that the US is not secure against terrorism while militant safe havens persist.

Even earlier, Afghanistan was back in US headlines, because it has become a useful punching bag in the context of domestic politics. America’s chaotic departure from Afghanistan — based on a deal with the Afghan Taliban brokered by the Trump administration, followed by an exit plan executed by the Biden administration — has featured repeatedly on the campaign trail, with Republicans and Democrats blaming each other for all that went wrong.

The Republican Party timed its publication last month of a report that sharply criticises the Biden administration for failing to plan for the return to power of the Taliban, and taking steps to safely evacuate Americans and their Afghan allies beforehand. It aims to defend the Republicans’ record following last year’s After Action Review, an internal US government probe into both sides’ failings during the withdrawal, particularly the failure to anticipate and plan for worst-case scenarios. Having stirred the Afghan pot to win domestic political points, the next US government will have to contend with what it has brewed.

Reprioritisation of Afghanistan will also be driven by the fact that Russia is seeking to emerge as a regional leader on the topic. The Moscow Format meeting involving regional governments earlier this month focused on Afghanistan, and stressed how regional security hinges on the Taliban’s ability to clamp down on militant groups operating from its soil. This is not a conversation Washington can easily ignore.

In this context, Pakistan is preparing for a throwback to the days when Washington worried about global terrorism threats emanating from Afghanistan, and sought to tackle them by scattering counterterrorism funding in Islamabad’s direction. Increased CT cooperation was the focus of bilateral meetings between the US and Pakistan in May, and the government’s decision to ‘reinvigorate’ its national CT strategy in June appeared strategically timed.

No doubt, Pakistan faces a grave and material security threat from groups such as the TTP that carry out cross-border attacks from Afghanistan. The rapid rise in militant attacks is alarming: August’s death toll of 254 people killed in militant attacks — the highest over the past six years — was an unambiguous warning sign. Pakistan should absolutely do whatever it takes to eliminate this security threat, including cooperating with regional governm­ents similarly af­­fected, as well as global players with their own vested interests such as the US.

But what the state should not do is cynically use CT considerations as a blunt instrument against public dissent. Nor should it assume that rekindled US interest in regional security offers it carte blanche to clamp down in the name of national security. The PTM ban on tenuous security grounds, the conflation of Pakhtun identity with terrorism and anti-state positioning, the focus on Afghan flags at the PTM jirga — these are missteps that distract from the real threat and damage state credibility.

Perhaps this time around the government can take advantage of the presence of a large, local constituency that is opposed to extremist violence, and instead, privileges peaceful protest, rule of law and democratic rights. Throughout our erstwhile ‘war on terror’ we sought effective CT narratives. These now exist in the form of grassroots movements across the country. A changing geopolitical context should not embolden their suppression — it should empower them as strong alternatives to future cycles of violence.

The writer is a political and integrity risk analyst.
X: @humayusuf

Published in Dawn, October 14th, 2024

Afghan Taliban vow to implement media ban on images of living things

Kabul (AFP) – Afghanistan's Taliban morality ministry pledged Monday to implement a law banning news media from publishing images of all living things, with journalists told the rule will be gradually enforced.


Issued on: 14/10/2024 

A sign of the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice is seen at an entrance gate of a government building in Kabul © Hoshang Hashimi / AFP


It comes after the Taliban government recently announced legislation formalising their strict interpretations of Islamic law that have been imposed since they swept to power in 2021.

"The law applies to all Afghanistan... and it will be implemented gradually," the spokesman for the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (PVPV) Saiful Islam Khyber told AFP, adding that officials would work to persuade people that images of living things are against Islamic law.

"Coercion has no place in the implementation of the law," he said.

"It's only advice, and convincing people these things are really contrary to sharia (law) and must be avoided."

The new law detailed several rules for news media, including banning the publication of images of all living things and ordering outlets not to mock or humiliate Islam, or contradict Islamic law.

Aspects of the new law have not yet been strictly enforced, including advise to the general public not to take or look at images of living things on phones and other devices.

Taliban officials continue to regularly post photos of people on social media and Afghan journalists have told AFP they received assurances from authorities after the law was announced that they would be able to continue their work.

The information ministry did not immediately respond to AFP's request for comment.

"Until now, regarding the articles of the law related to media, there are ongoing efforts in many provinces to implement it but that has not started in all provinces," Khyber said.

He added "work has started" in the southern Taliban stronghold of Kandahar and the neighbouring Helmand province, as well as northern Takhar.

Before the recent law was announced, Taliban officials in Kandahar were banned from taking photos and videos of living things but the rule did not include news media.

"Now it applies to everyone," Khyber said.

Journalists summoned

In central Ghazni province on Sunday, PVPV officials summoned local journalists and told them the morality police would start gradually implementing the law.

They advised visual journalists to take photos from further away and film fewer events "to get in the habit", a journalist who did not want to give his name for fear of reprisal told AFP.

Reporters in Maidan Wardak province were also told the rules would be implemented gradually in a similar meeting.

Television and pictures of living things were banned across the country under the previous Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, but a similar edict has so far not been broadly imposed since their return to power.

Since 2021, however, officials have sporadically forced business owners to follow some censorship rules, such as crossing out the faces of men and women on adverts, covering the heads of shop mannequins with plastic bags, and blurring the eyes of fish pictured on restaurant menus.

Images of living things, including a fish at a restaurant in Lashkar Gah in Helmand province, are often censored in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover 

© Wakil KOHSAR / AFP

When the Taliban authorities seized control of the country after a two-decade-long insurgency against foreign-backed governments, Afghanistan had 8,400 media employees.

Only 5,100 remain in the profession, according to media industry sources.

This figure includes 560 women, who have borne the brunt of restrictions the United Nations have called "gender apartheid", including being ordered to wear masks on television.

In Helmand, women's voices have been banned from television and radio.

Afghanistan has slipped from 122nd place to 178th out of 180 countries in a press freedom ranking compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

© 2024 AFP

'Nobel economics prize' awarded to trio for work on links between institutions and prosperity

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson won the 2024 Nobel memorial prize in economics "for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity", the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said on Monday.


Issued on: 14/10/2024

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson.

 © Niklas Elmehed, Nobel Prize Outreach

The Nobel memorial prize in economics has been awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson for research into differences in prosperity between nations.

The three economists “have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity,” the Nobel committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

“Societies with a poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better. The laureates’ research helps us understand why,” it added.

The announcement was made Monday in Stockholm.

Acemoglu and Johnson work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Robinson conducts his research at the University of Chicago.

The economics prize is formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The central bank established it in 1968 as a memorial to Nobel, the 19th-century Swedish businessman and chemist who invented dynamite and established the five Nobel Prizes.

Though Nobel purists stress that the economics prize is technically not a Nobel Prize, it is always presented together with the others on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.

Nobel honors were announced last week in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace.

(AP)

Trio wins economics Nobel for work on wealth inequality

Stockholm (AFP) – The Nobel prize in economics was awarded on Monday to Turkish-American Daron Acemoglu and British-Americans Simon Johnson and James Robinson for research into wealth inequality between nations.

Issued on: 14/10/2024 -

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson demonstrated a relationship between societal institutions and prosperity, the Nobel economics jury said 

© Christine OLSSON / TT NEWS AGENCY/AFP


By examining the various political and economic systems introduced by European colonisers, the three have demonstrated a relationship between societal institutions and prosperity, the jury said.

"Reducing the vast differences in income between countries is one of our time's greatest challenges," Jakob Svensson, chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences, said in a statement.

"The laureates have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for achieving this," Svensson added.

Acemoglu, 57, and Johnson, 61, are professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Robinson, 64, is a professor at the University of Chicago.

The jury highlighted the laureates' work in illuminating how political and economic institutions play a role in explaining why some countries prosper while others do not.

"Although the poorer countries are, of course, becoming richer, they're not closing the gap," Jan Teorell, a professor of political science and member of the award committee, told a press conference.

"Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson have shown that a large part of this income gap is due to differences in economic and political institutions in society," Teorell said.

'Inclusive institutions'

In a statement explaining the prize, the jury noted the example of the city of Nogales, which is divided by the US-Mexican border, where residents on the US side of the city tend to be better off.

"The decisive difference is thus not geography or culture, but institutions," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

The US economic system provides residents north of the border greater opportunities to choose their education and profession, and they are part of the US political system, which gives them broad political rights.

By contrast, south of the border, residents live under other economic conditions, and the political system limits their potential to influence legislation.

In addition, the jury noted that the laureates' research also helped explain why some countries become trapped in a situation of "low economic growth."

The Academy said differences between nations could be traced back to the institutions built up by colonial powers.

It said that "in some colonies, the purpose was to exploit the indigenous population and extract natural resources to benefit the colonisers," which would provide only "short-term gains for the people in power".

In others, colonial powers "built inclusive political and economic systems," which would "create long-term benefits for everyone."

So "institutions that were created to exploit the masses are bad for long-run growth."

Conversely, "ones that establish fundamental economic freedoms and the rule of law are good for it."

Acemoglu, who was "delighted" to receive the award, told reporters that the "work that we had done favours democracy."

'Substantial gain'

Speaking via telephone from Athens as the award was announced in Stockholm, Acemoglu said that the economies of "countries that democratise, starting from a non-democratic regime" grow faster than non-democratic regimes.

"And it's a substantial gain," Acemoglu said.

He acknowledged nonetheless that "democracy is not a panacea" and "introducing democracy is very hard".

Acemoglu, the author of several best-sellers including "Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty", was considered a top name for the prize this year.

The economics prize wraps up this year's Nobel season, which honoured achievements in artificial intelligence for the physics and chemistry prizes, while the Peace Prize went to Japanese group Nihon Hidankyo, committed to fighting nuclear weapons.

South Korea's Han Kang won the literature prize -- the only woman laureate this year -- while the medicine prize lauded discoveries in understanding gene regulation.

The Nobel Prizes consist of a diploma, a gold medal and a $1 million reward and winners will receive their awards at ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist and prize creator Alfred Nobel.

© 2024 AFP

Role of government, poverty research tipped for economics Nobel


By AFP
October 13, 2024


The economics prize, the only one not bequeathed by Alfred Nobel in his will, was created in 1968 - Copyright AFP Jonathan NACKSTRAND

Camille BAS-WOHLERT

Closing the season, the Norwegian Nobel Committee will announce the Nobel economics prize on Monday, with specialists on credit, the role of government, and wealth inequality seen as possible contenders.

The winner of the prestigious prize, which last year went to American economist Claudia Goldin, will be announced at 11:45 am (0945 GMT).

Goldin was recognised “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes” and was ironically one of very few women ever handed the prize.

Of the 93 laureates honoured since 1969, only three have been women — Goldin in 2023, her compatriot Elinor Ostrom in 2009 and French-American Esther Duflo in 2019.

“The general trend in society to attach greater importance to parity and diversity has broadened the research process,” Mikael Carlsson, professor of economics at Uppsala University in Sweden, told AFP.

“However, this is not the criteria taken into account when assessing whether a scientific contribution is worthy of a Nobel Prize,” he insisted.

His bet is that Japan’s Nobuhiro Kiyotaki and Britain’s John H. Moore will win for their work on how small shocks can affect economic cycles, or American Susan Athey for her work on market design.

But what criteria should be used to predict a Nobel winner?

For Magnus Henrekson of the Research Institute of Industrial Economics in Stockholm, the most obvious place to start is to look at the research interests of the committee that decides which candidates are worthy.

Its chairman specialises in development economics, though Henrekson said it was doubtful the field would be honoured as it was recently awarded a prize.

“I don’t think it’s likely that the same field will win the prize two years running,” Henrekson said.

– Poverty or wealth inequality? –

Frenchman Philippe Aghion, as well as Americans George Loewenstein, Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart are academics often mentioned as worthy of the prize.

Turkish-American Daron Acemoglu, a professor at MIT in the United States and the author of several best-sellers including “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty,” is considered a top name this year.

Acemoglu could potentially be paired with Russian-American Andrei Shleifer.

Predicting the winner is always tricky, but online statistics platform Statista noted that by looking at past recipients and the state of current research in economics, “we have a decent idea of candidates who are likely to win a Nobel in their career, if not in 2024”.

It believes Acemoglu could get the nod for his “work on the long-run development of institutions which facilitate or hinder economic growth”.

Other possible candidates include macroeconomists such as Frenchman Olivier Blanchard, and Americans Larry Summers and Gregory Mankiw.

Economists who work on wealth inequality, such as France’s Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman as well as French-American Emmanuel Saez have also often been mentioned in recent years.

Canadian-American Janet Currie, a specialist in anti-poverty policies, is a favourite for analytics group Clarivate, which keeps an eye on potential Nobel science laureates based on citations.

It also spotlighted British-Indian Partha Dasgupta as a potential winner for “integrating nature and its resources in the human economy”.

– ‘False Nobel’ –

Paolo Mauro, a former member of the International Monetary Fund, was also put forward for “empirical studies of the effects of corruption on investment and economic growth”.

The economics prize is the only Nobel not among the original five created in the will of Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896.

It was instead created through a donation from the Swedish central bank in 1968, leading detractors to dub it “a false Nobel”.

However, like for the other Nobel science prizes, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences decides the winner and follows the same selection process.

The economics prize wraps up this year’s Nobel season, which honoured achievements in artificial intelligence for the physics and chemistry prizes, while the Peace Prize went to Japanese group Nihon Hidankyo, committed to fighting nuclear weapons.

South Korea’s Han Kan won the literature prize — the only woman laureate so far this year — while the medicine prize lauded discoveries in understanding gene regulation.

The Nobel Prizes consist of a diploma, a gold medal and a one-million-dollar lump sum.

They will be presented at ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist and prize creator Alfred Nobel.

This Pennsylvania union leader is the kind of voter who could swing the presidential race

Kalena Thomhave, 

Pennsylvania Capital-Star
October 14, 2024 


Ryan Sanders is the kind of voter whose support may ultimately decide the presidential race. A resident of Erie County in Pennsylvania, Sanders describes himself as “middle of the road”: He leans conservative, but he also said he tends to oscillate between either side of the center. In his early 40s, he’s young, like many swing voters. And above all, he said he wants a presidential candidate who is “honest” — a trait consistently prized by those who remain undecided.

There’s at least one thing that separates Sanders from other swing voters, though — a proud member of Sheet Metal Workers Local 12, he’s president of the Erie-Crawford Central Labor Council (CLC), the local arm of the AFL-CIO.

Election analysts say Vice President Kamala Harris’ easiest path to victory may run through Pennsylvania, with its critical 19 electoral votes. The state has 750,000 union members — more than enough to swing the state, which Trump won by fewer than 50,000 votes in 2016. Unions are mobilizing members and their households to turn out, believing their votes will be decisive. As union members have drifted away from overwhelmingly supporting Democrats, voters like Sanders represent a key segment of the working-class voters the Harris campaign is counting on swaying.

Unions still remain strongly tied to the Democratic Party, and in their heyday, Sanders’ union ties may have predicted his vote. But declining membership over the past few decades has lessened the influence of union membership in public life. The U.S. partisan divide has crept into unions, and many voters no longer think their union identities affect their votes at all.

“There are a significant number of swing union members,” especially in Pennsylvania, said Steve Rosenthal, president of The Organizing Group, which consults with unions. He notes that according to 2020 exit polling, roughly 49% of union households in Pennsylvania voted for Joe Biden over Donald Trump, compared to 62% in Michigan and 59% in Wisconsin, also battleground states with deep union traditions.

Unions are spending millions of dollars to mobilize union workers to vote for Harris. Labor councils like the Erie-Crawford CLC play a key role, as they are tasked with local community engagement.

Even though he is undecided, as president of the CLC, Sanders has canvassed voters as part of the AFL-CIO’s election push in support of Harris. Sanders is a team player, but he said he believes canvassing is not very effective, as he thinks most people’s minds are already made up.

“It’s just information,” he said with a wave of his hand.

Most unions in Pennsylvania and elsewhere have endorsed Harris. The Sheet Metal Air Rail and Transportation Workers, of which Sanders’ Local 12 is a part, also endorsed the vice president, citing the “existential, anti-worker threat of another Trump presidential term.” Elsewhere in Erie, Bill McLaughlin, business manager for Local 603 of the Laborers’ Union, which represents construction workers, said he’s encouraging his members to vote for Harris because she has “their paychecks in mind.”


One reason Sanders said he hesitates to support Trump “is that he’s not as union [friendly] as Harris or Biden.” But it’s hard for him to forget that “the economy was so good” under Trump, he said. Trump inherited a growing economy from Obama, which continued to expand until the onset of the pandemic. The economy under Biden has also been strong, but tempered by high inflation, which Sanders said has cut into his paycheck. Inflation has since returned to pre-pandemic levels, but prices remain elevated. Roughly 53% of Americans rated the economy in July 2019 as “good” or “excellent,” according to a Gallup poll. In July 2024, just 22% of Americans rated the economy favorably.

But the environment for unions — a core issue for Sanders — was hostile under Trump, who visited the county on Sept. 29, one of four campaign stops in Pennsylvania within a month. The Trump administration constrained the union election process and made it more difficult for workers to win and keep unions; defended right-to-work laws — which often reduce union bargaining power in the workplace — before the Supreme Court; and attempted to undermine union apprenticeship programs by introducing and expanding employer-led ones.

Nevertheless, Trump made a pitch to union voters at his Erie rally, claiming that immigrants are “coming through the border and they’re taking your jobs,” which will “have a big effect on unions.” (Economists generally agree that immigration benefits the economy and that the strong labor market is adding jobs for both immigrants and U.S.-born workers.)


When asked if the Trump administration’s labor policies concerned him, Sanders said they didn’t really, though he admits he’s new to the union. In fact, he’s still an apprentice. His energy and friendliness helped thrust him into a leadership position in April. (“Lucky me it’s an election year,” he said dryly.) And from his perspective, it’s more important that “a good economy fuels work,” he said, “even if we have to fight a little more at the negotiating table.”

He said Harris is a better friend to labor than Trump. Union supporters of the vice president view her as having a long track record of supporting labor, stretching back to her time as California’s attorney general, when she backed an initiative targeting wage theft. She served as the second-in-command to a president who declared himself the most pro-union in history.

Still, Sanders doesn’t feel like he really knows Harris or what she plans to do as president. He also emphasized that the Teamsters union declined to endorse her, which makes him feel all the more conflicted. (The union did not endorse any presidential candidate, but many local affiliates, including in battleground states, have backed Harris.)

Capital & Main reached out to both the Harris and Trump campaigns for this story, but neither provided a comment.

Erie as a pivot county

Over the past four presidential elections — since 2008 — a majority of voters in Sanders’ home county of Erie have chosen the winner. Indeed, Erie was one of the “pivot counties” that voted for Obama in 2012 and pivoted to Donald Trump in 2016. And in 2020, Joe Biden won by just 1,319 votes in a county of 270,000. That makes him a swing voter in a swing county. But unlike Erie County, Sanders has not backed winners. He voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Donald Trump in 2020.

Jim Wertz, former chair of the Erie County Democratic Party who is currently running for state senate, thinks the county is “fairly representative” of the whole country. He points to the diverse, urban landscape of Erie city surrounded by the county’s rural areas as a reflection of the nation’s demographics. In fact, Wertz notes, Erie has historically been a test market for new products.

Like many places in the Rust Belt, Erie County has transitioned over the past decades from being a manufacturing hub to having an economy increasingly reliant on jobs in health care, education and the service sector. The No. 1 employer is no longer the General Electric locomotive manufacturing plant (now owned by Wabtec), but Erie Insurance.

Still, the Erie metropolitan area has seen union membership increase since just before the pandemic, as the percentage of workers covered by unions rose from 12% in 2019 to 15% in 2023 — much higher than the national average of 10%. Since 2020, workers in Erie have unionized at a local television station, a facilities management company, and a nursing home. Plus, union jobs have been added in manufacturing and other private industries.

Federal infrastructure investments may be poised to add more. The Inflation Reduction Act, for example, will create an estimated 212,400 jobs across Pennsylvania by 2032. And due to a recent executive order intended to tie strong labor standards to federal projects, many are likely to be union jobs.

On Labor Day morning, the air is brisk in downtown Erie, and groups of union members, sorted by their matching T-shirts, are huddled in the street, awaiting the start of the city’s annual Labor Day parade. Four lanes of trucks and buses manned by Teamsters and members of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) are poised to roll down State Street, the city of Erie’s main thoroughfare.

Bruce Johnson and James Schaffner, bus drivers with ATU, are among those waiting to march. As of early September, Johnson said he hadn’t noticed any outreach from his union, though he knows “Donald Trump isn’t really a union guy.”


Schaffner said he’s “proud to be a union member,” but he also said his union identity has nothing to do with his politics. “I’m a Democrat down from my head to my tippy toes,” he said, with a boyish smile, sporting a pair of sunglasses emblazoned with the Pittsburgh Penguins logo. Schaffner said their union is politically divided, and they simply “don’t bring up” politics — he doubts discussing the election would be productive.

Johnson, also a Democrat, nods next to him, saying he agrees “to the core.”

Though Sanders’ politics differ from Johnson’s and Schaffner’s, he shares that sentiment: He doesn’t think that his voter registration matters very much at all to the work that he does as a labor council president.

“Who I vote for doesn’t have anything to do with my love for [the CLC] and the work that we do” in the community, Sanders said.

He also loves his union. Being a union worker has changed his life, he explains, describing how he was a Las Vegas bartender for more than 20 years before he moved back to Erie County and followed his brother-in-law’s advice to take up sheet metal work.

Sanders was filling bags with union-made candy to throw to kids along the parade route when he excitedly told me he had finalized the purchase of a farm with his wife just the day before. And it’s largely thanks to his union job, he said, seeming almost shocked at his good fortune. “I am overly blessed to be with this union,” he said, adding that he can “really see what a union can do for workers” — a perspective he never had until he joined Local 12. Now, as CLC president, he wants others in the community to recognize the good that unions can do — and that they can be a real option for their kids when they graduate high school.

Sanders had expected to make up his mind about the election after the Sept.10 presidential debate, but when we talked the next day, he told me he wasn’t impressed by either candidate’s performance. Trump, he said, seemed to become “unhinged” after Harris suggested that people leave his rallies early. “I didn’t like that.” However, he thought Harris “gave a better performance without answering any questions.”

“At this point,” Sanders said, “I’m probably gonna [decide how to] vote when I walk into the booth.”

'Vile stuff': NYT shamed by its own former public editor for whitewashing Trump racism

Brad Reed
October 13, 2024

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump holds a campaign rally in Reno, Nevada, U.S. October 11, 2024. REUTERS/Fred Greaves

Former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan this week shamed her one-time employer for its coverage of the 2024 presidential election.

Writing on her Substack page, Sullivan picked apart the Times' widely criticized decision to frame a story about former President Donald Trump openly espousing racist rhetoric as simply being about his "long-held fascination with genes."

As Sullivan put it, the Times' headline takes "hate-filled trope and treats it like some sort of lofty intellectual interest," as though Trump were really some acclaimed genetic biologist rather than a former game show host with a long history of racist rhetoric.

And Sullivan argued that the article itself wasn't much better than the headline, as it only mentioned that Trump has "a pattern of using dehumanizing language to describe undocumented immigrants" in the story's 11th paragraph.

Still later in the story, the Times informed readers that Trump had also directly echoed Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler by saying that immigrants had "poisoned the blood" of the nation.

ALSO READ: 'Protector?': Outrage as Trump 'endorses a woman getting hit' after she disrupts his rally

"This is vile stuff," Sullivan commented. "Cleaning it up so it sounds like an academic white paper is really not a responsible way to present what’s happening."

What's more, Sullivan added, it doesn't take an experienced journalist to identify the major issues with the paper's framing of Trump's racist rhetoric.

"I showed these headlines and stories to my graduate students at Columbia University’s journalism school on Friday morning," she wrote. "I didn’t ask leading questions or try to tell them what to think. Theydidn’t hesitate in identifying the problem."

The GOP's Barbarism and unrelenting extremism knows no bounds

John Stoehr
October 10, 2024 

U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) gestures at a campaign event of Republican vice presidential nominee U.S. Senator JD Vance (R-OH) in Lindale, Georgia, U.S., October 4, 2024. REUTERS/Megan Varner TPX

This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers.

During a national emergency, it’s good to say that “we’re all in this together.” Whether it’s a war, a pandemic or a hurricane, everyone is affected. Everyone has a stake in the outcome. And if we don’t believe and act like we are all in this together, the crisis will get worse.

This idea of collective fate in the face of dire threats to our lives and fortunes is conventional. So much so that it beggars belief when rightwing politicians tell us that, actually, we’re not all in this together.

It beggars belief so much that it’s just easier, mentally speaking, for ordinary people who have a sense of the national good to say that rightwingers don’t really mean it. It’s easier to believe they really do share the same core values as we do, but aren’t living up to them.

It’s easier to call them hypocrites.

In defiance of God

Rightwingers are not hypocrites, though. They believe American society is divided into ingroups and outgroups. The former is good, right and deserving. The latter is bad, wrong and undeserving. When there’s a national emergency, the federal government should help the ingroup, because it’s the only group that constitutes a “real nation.”

Meanwhile, the outgroup can take care of itself.

Or die trying.

Not only do they believe American society is divided into ingroups and outgroups, they believe it ought to be. The orders of power should be vertical and hierarchical. That is the ideal, because that is “natural.”

For this reason, liberal efforts to flatten the orders of power, so that the outgroup has as many rights and privileges as the ingroup, are seen by rightwingers as a perversion of the natural order of things.

To them, we are not all in this together, because we can’t be.

If we were, that would be in defiance of God.


Barbarism, not hypocrisy
No matter how many times rightwingers tell us what they really believe, the rest of us cling to the belief that they really don’t.

Stubbornly, we insist that they will set aside politics during a national emergency and that, in the end, they will choose nation over party.

While some of us realize that they will never set aside politics, not even during a national emergency, most of us don’t understand why.


The reason?

They already put the nation above all else. The politics that we keep expecting them to set aside are in service to the nation as they define it, and they define the nation in ways most Americans never would.

For most people, the nation is everyone. We’re all in this together.


For rightwingers, the nation is them. You’re with us or against us.

They are not hypocrites. They are the “real Americans,” God’s chosen. They are not failing to live up to their values. They are realizing them.

What the rest of us fail to understand is that those values are horrible. They are not only illiberal and anti-democratic, they are barbarous.


So barbarous that it beggars belief.

It’s easier to call them hypocrites.

You can’t shame a zealot
Barbarism, not hypocrisy, is the reason why a Florida Republican could say with a straight face that FEMA funding should come in advance of Hurricane Milton even though she voted to cut it a few weeks prior.


Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna falsely implied that Kamala Harris and the Biden administration were withholding disaster relief, even though she “voted to shut down the federal government, vetoing a measure to extend FEMA funding by $20 billion,” according to the New Republic. “Luna was among 82 House Republicans who voted against the deal and one of 11 Florida lawmakers who cast dissenting votes.”

Luna’s critics would allege that she’s saying one thing but doing another, but it’s the opposite to her. Demanding government money if it helps the ingroup is in keeping with withholding government money if it hurts the outgroup. Indeed, the concept is so natural to Luna that she’s falsely accusing the vice president of doing the very same thing.

When Republicans like Luna do this, critics often despair. They say there’s no bottom for these people. There’s no shame. They’ve abandoned their principles. They’ve followed Donald Trump too far.


Again, it’s the opposite.

They are realizing their principles.

They want a society in which the ingroup gets the blessings of freedom and democracy, and all the government assistance, while the outgroup gets whatever’s coming to it. If a hurricane plows into Florida, God’s chosen must be helped! If it plows into Puerto Rico, well, tough luck.


They want such tyranny, because they believe God wants it.

You can shame a hypocrite.

You can’t shame a zealot.

No such thing as collective fate
Barbarism, not hypocrisy, is also the reason Trump can betray America without risking his reputation among zealots for putting America first.

To them, it doesn’t matter that, as president during the pandemic, he sent Vladimir Putin COVID tests for his personal use, as the country struggled with shortages. It doesn’t matter, as my senator Chris Murphy said, that “he decided to let Americans die to keep Putin alive.”

The “America” in “America first” is not America. It’s the ingroup. And the ingroup has more in common with Russia than the outgroup.

Russia is a top-down society in which the orders of power are strictly maintained. Liberal efforts to flatten those orders democratically are crushed, often violently, with every instrument of the state.

In times of national emergency, as there is with Russia’s war against Ukraine, there is no such thing as a collective fate. They don’t believe “we’re all in this together.” The weak are sacrificed by the strong.

Russia is the ideal.

It’s what the ingroup believes America should be.

And if Trump helped an ally in God’s plan, so be it.

Barbarism is bizarre
Joe Biden didn’t say “we’re all in this together,” but he meant that when he said there are neither blue states nor red states in the face of national emergencies like Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.

“There’s one United States of America,” he said, “where neighbors are helping neighbors, volunteers and first-responders are risking everything, including their own lives, to help their fellow Americans.”

To meet our collective fate, we must be able to trust each other, and to do that, everyone must have good information. That’s why Trump and the Republicans are lying so much. It doesn’t matter that they’re hurting their own. What matters to them is preventing the spirit of solidarity from destabilizing right-wing forces that keep us apart.

Biden offered a liberal alternative to barbarism.

“Former President Trump has led the onslaught of lies,” Biden said. “Assertions have been made that property has been confiscated. That’s simply not true. They’re saying people impacted by these storms will receive $750 in cash and no more. That’s simply not true. They’re saying the money needed in this crisis is being diverted to migrants. What a ridiculous thing to say. It’s not true. Now the claims are getting more bizarre. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, from Georgia, is now saying the government is literally controlling the weather – controlling the weather! It’s beyond ridiculous. It’s got to stop.”

The lies and disinformation won’t stop, of course, because zealots like Greene believe they’re fighting for their country. They believe Donald Trump is their champion. They believe they are God’s chosen.

If they were hypocrites, they could be shamed into doing the right thing and acting like we really are all in this together. Hypocrisy isn’t the problem, though. Barbarism is, no matter how bizarre it seems.