Wenders making a film about fancy public restrooms in Japan

By YURI KAGEYAMA

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Filmmaker Wim Wenders, left, and actor Koji Yakusho pose together during a press gathering for The Tokyo Toilet art project in Tokyo, Wednesday, May 11, 2022. Wenders is making a film about beatified Japanese toilets that will have what the German director calls “social meaning” about people in modern cities. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)

TOKYO (AP) — Wim Wenders is making a film about high-end public toilets in Japan that will have what the renowned German director calls “social meaning” about people in modern cities.

“My first reaction was, I must admit: What? Toilets? Chotto mattene,” he said Wednesday, using the Japanese expression for “wait a minute”.

But then he began to see what the story could be about.

“For me, they turned from toilets into restrooms. That’s a very nice word in English, the restroom. When I saw these places the next couple of days, I realized they were restrooms in the true sense of the word,” Wenders told reporters in Tokyo’s fashionable Shibuya district, where the dozen public restrooms are located.

The facilities were designed by leading architects including Kengo Kuma and Tadao Ando, with the idea that a pleasant public restroom could counter the common expectation it had to be filthy, filled with graffiti or associated with crime.

Wenders, the Oscar-nominated director of “Wings of Desire” and “Buena Vista Social Club,” said when he saw the Shibuya bathrooms, he was moved.

“This is a truly precious place,” Wenders said.

 A man uses a transparent toilet that has turned opaque, right, after the door was locked at Haru-no-Owaga Community Park in Tokyo on Aug. 27, 2020. 

And so his film’s hero will be a sanitation worker who cleans the toilets, seeing his job as a craft and a service for the people. Details of the script are still being worked out.

A worker cleans inside the public restroom which was designed by architect Tadao Ando in Tokyo, Wednesday, May 11, 2022. 

Koji Yakusho, known for playing the Japanese everyman in works like “Shall We Dance” and “Babel,” said he accepted the role as soon as it was offered because he wanted to work with Wenders.

“I have a feeling it’s going to be a beautiful story. And I feel a story that has the toilet as the setting, with the person who works there and the people who use it, will help lead to an understanding of Japan,” said Yakusho.

The Tokyo Toilet project was initially conceived to impress foreign visitors expected for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, before the coronavirus pandemic forced the events to take place without spectators in the stands.

The public restroom designed by Ando is round with frames for the exterior walls, to allow air to circulate. In real life it gets cleaned without water to avoid mold or decay by men in blue jumpsuits by Japanese fashion designer Nigo.

The project, including Wenders’ film, has the backing of Fast Retailing, the company behind the Uniqlo clothing chain, and The Nippon Foundation, which carries out humanitarian projects using revenue from boat racing.

Wenders said his film, despite its humble setting, will explore a profound concept.

“I almost think it’s a utopian idea because the toilet is a place where everybody is the same. There is no rich or poor, old or young. Everyone is part of humanity,” he said.

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Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

Review: Charting country music paths in ‘Her Country’

By MAE ANDERSON

This image released by Henry Holt shows cover art for "Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be" by Marissa R. Moss.

 (Henry Holt via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — “Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be,” by Marissa R. Moss (Henry Holt & Co.)

Women have always played a major part of country music, from the Carter Family to Dolly Parton, but in recent years you’d be hard pressed to hear that on country music radio. In “Her Country,” Marissa R. Moss chronicles how three singers – Kacey Musgraves, Maren Morris and Mickey Guyton — found ways to circumvent the traditional Nashville Music Row country music industry path and its “good ol’ boy” mentality to chart successful paths of their own.

In the 1990s, women country music stars seemed to dominate the airwaves: Shania Twain, Faith Hill, the Chicks (formerly the Dixie Chicks) were mainstream stars. But after the Chicks were essentially blacklisted in 2003 for criticizing George W. Bush, a chill for women settled over the industry. Even today, women are rarely played back-to-back on country radio, and make up less than 20% of airtime.

But as Morris shows, the women in “Her Country,” have managed to produce some of the most creative, inclusive and successful country music of the moment despite obstacles. Musgraves, Morris and Guyton all started out in Texas as talented singers from a young age, each eventually making their way to Nashville to try to make it in country music.

Musgraves strove for inclusiveness, both in her lyrics, and by making sure her co-writers Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally took the stage when she won the Country Music Awards Song of the Year Award in 2014 for “Follow Your Arrow.” It was the first time two openly gay people stood on the CMA stage for an award.

Morris found success by self-releasing her songs and then working with Spotify to launch them in 2015. Her songs were a hit on the platform and left labels scrambling to sign her. Next, she became a crossover success with the worldwide pop hit “The Middle,” with producer Zedd and musical duo Grey in 2018. She joined the country music supergroup The Highwomen in 2019.

And Guyton overcame years of discrimination as a Black woman singer in the country music business to receive a Grammy nomination in 2020 for her song “Black Like Me,” – the first Black female solo artist to get a Grammy nomination in a country music category.

“I realize that not only am I walking through these doors as a Black woman, I need to hold the door open for many other Black, brown, LGBTQIA+ artists that have the same dreams,” she said backstage.

Cardinal, pop star bailed in latest Hong Kong security arrests


Wed, May 11, 2022


A Catholic cardinal critical of Beijing was released on bail by Hong Kong authorities, local media reported late Wednesday, as his arrest under the city's national security law prompted US demands that he be freed.

Retired cardinal Joseph Zen, 90, was seen in media footage waving to reporters as he left a police station in the city hours after his arrest, but he did not give a statement.

He was released shortly before the White House issued a statement demanding he be freed "immediately", and as the Vatican voiced "concern" at his arrest and said it was following the situation "very closely".

Canadian Cantonese pop singer Denise Ho, who was also among a group of veteran democracy advocates arrested under the law, was similarly released on bail, local media said.

Those arrested were all trustees of a now-disbanded fund that helped finance demonstrators detained during massive democracy protests that swept Hong Kong three years ago.

Police said in a statement on Wednesday that two men and two women, aged between 45 and 90, had been detained for conspiring to collude with foreign forces to endanger national security.

They will all be granted bail but their travel documents will be confiscated, police added.

Zen is a former bishop of Hong Kong and one of the most senior Catholic clerics in the Chinese business hub.

He has been critical of the Vatican's decision to reach a compromise with China over the appointment of bishops on the mainland and an advocate of Hong Kong's democracy movement.

Ho is a popular local vocalist and an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ rights.

The other people arrested were veteran barrister Margaret Ng and prominent cultural studies scholar Hui Po-keung.

Police said those arrested were trustees of the "612 Humanitarian Relief Fund", which helped arrested protesters pay their legal and medical bills.

Those arrested were suspected of endangering national security because they allegedly asked foreign nations or overseas organisations to impose sanctions on Hong Kong, police said.

On Tuesday, scholar Hui became the first among the group to be arrested as he tried to leave via the airport to take up an academic post in Europe.

- 'Collusion' -

The offence of "foreign collusion" was introduced in a sweeping national security law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in response to the democracy protests.

The security law has crushed dissent in the once outspoken business hub and can carry up to life in jail.

One of the group's trustee, democracy activist Cyd Ho, has already been jailed for unauthorised assembly in a separate case.

The fund disbanded last year after the city's national security police demanded it hand over operational details including information about its donors and beneficiaries.

In its Wednesday statement, police said it was also seeking to charge the trustees and an additional person for failing to properly register the group in accordance with law.

Shortly before the fund closed in October, Hong Kong's Lingnan University said its contract with Hui had ended but declined to state a reason on privacy grounds.

Academics who played prominent roles in Hong Kong's now decimated democracy movement have often found themselves dropped by universities and are struggling to find work.

A social commentator and prolific author, Hui taught for more than two decades at Lingnan University and was credited by former student leader Nathan Law with inspiring his political career.

bur-hol/st

Reports: Hong Kong arrests Roman Catholic cardinal, others


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FILE - Hong Kong's outspoken cardinal Joseph Zen, center, and other religious protesters hold placards with "Respects religious freedom" written on them during a demonstration outside the China Liaison Office in Hong Kong, Wednesday, July 11, 2012. Reports say a Roman Catholic cardinal and three others have been arrested in Hong Kong on suspicion of colluding with foreign forces to endanger Chinese national security. U.K.-based human rights group Hong Kong Watch said Cardinal Joseph Zen, lawyer Margaret Ng, singer Denise Ho and scholar Hui Po-keung were detained Wednesday, , May 11, 2022, by Hong Kong's National Security Police. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)


HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong authorities arrested a Roman Catholic cardinal, a singer and at least two others on Wednesday on suspicion of colluding with foreign forces to endanger China’s national security, reports said.

Cardinal Joseph Zen, singer-actress Denise Ho, lawyer Margaret Ng and scholar Hui Po-keung were detained by Hong Kong’s National Security Police, the U.K.-based human rights group Hong Kong Watch said.

The arrests were apparently related to their roles as trustees of the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, which provided legal aid to people who took part in 2019 pro-democracy protests that were quashed by security forces, the group said. The fund closed in 2021, it said.

Scores of pro-democracy activists have been arrested under a sweeping National Security Law imposed on the city by Beijing in 2020 following the demonstrations. The city’s independent media have been gutted and its legislature reorganized to pack it with Beijing loyalists.

Zen, the retired archbishop of Hong Kong, is a fierce critic of China and has been blistering in his condemnation of the Vatican’s 2018 agreement with Beijing over bishop nominations, which he has said was a sellout of underground Christians in China.

The Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni, said the Holy See “learned with concern the news of the arrest of Cardinal Zen and is following the evolution of the situation with extreme attention.”

Ho also has been outspoken in her advocacy of civil and political rights. Her manager, Jelly Cheng, confirmed Ho’s arrest but said she had no other information.

Hui was arrested at Hong Kong’s international airport as he sought to leave the city, Hong Kong Watch said.

“Today’s arrests signal beyond a doubt that Beijing intends to intensify its crackdown on basic rights and freedoms in Hong Kong,” said the group’s chief executive, Benedict Rogers.

“We urge the international community to shine a light on this brutal crackdown and call for the immediate release of these activists,” Rogers said.

The White House also called on China and Hong Kong authorities to cease targeting Hong Kong advocates and immediately release Zen and others who were “unjustly detained and charged,” deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday.

Several leading Kong Kong activists have fled to Taiwan, Britain or elsewhere, while thousands of other Hong Kongers have chosen to leave the city, raising concerns about the economic future of the Asian financial center of 7.4 million.

The arrests follow the selection on Sunday of Hong Kong’s new leader, John Lee, a hard-line former security chief who ran unopposed in a process controlled by Beijing.

The European Union and foreign ministers from the Group of Seven industrialized countries — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. — condemned the election as fundamentally undemocratic and a betrayal of the “one country, two systems” principle under which Hong Kong was supposed to retain its own political, legal and economic system for 50 years after the end of British colonial rule.

Hong Kong’s government and police had no immediate comment on the reported arrests.

Maya Wang, Human Rights Watch’s China senior researcher, said she understood a fifth person, former Legislative Council member Cyd Ho Sau-lan, had also been arrested.

Arresting Zen for his peaceful activities “has to be a shocking new low for Hong Kong, illustrating the city’s free fall in human rights in the past two years,” Wang said in a statement.

PREMATURE BIRTHS ARE COSTLY HEALTHCARE
The tiniest babies: Shifting the boundary of life earlier
By LAURA UNGAR

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Curtis Means kisses his mother, Michelle Butler at their home in Eutaw, Ala., on Wednesday, March 23, 2022. Butler was just over halfway through her pregnancy when her water broke and contractions wracked her body. She couldn’t escape a terrifying truth: Her twins were coming much too soon. (AP Photo/Butch Dill)


BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Michelle Butler was just over halfway through her pregnancy when her water broke and contractions wracked her body. She couldn’t escape a terrifying truth: Her twins were coming much too soon.

Dr. Brian Sims entered the delivery room and gently explained that babies born so early likely won’t live. He told Butler he could keep them comfortable as they died.

But she pleaded through tears: “Give my twins a chance to survive.”

And he did.

Until recently, trying to save babies born this early would have been futile. Butler was in the fifth month of her pregnancy, one day past 21 weeks gestation. That’s seven weeks earlier than what doctors once considered “the lower limit of viability,” the earliest an infant could possibly survive outside the womb. But over the last half century, medical science has slowly shifted that boundary downward.

And that’s made viability — a word many associate with the abortion debate — key to decisions about desperately wanted babies at the very edge of life.

Growing numbers of extremely premature infants are getting life-saving treatment and surviving. A pivotal study in the Journal of the American Medical Association this year, which looked at nearly 11,000 such births in a neonatal research network that is part of the National Institutes of Health, found that 30% of babies born at 22 weeks, 56% born at 23 weeks and 71% born at 24 weeks lived at least until they were healthy enough to be sent home home if doctors tried to save them.

Those gains happened gradually and quietly as the notion of viability got a lot more attention in the abortion arena. Viability is mentioned 36 times in the initial draft of the leaked majority opinion by the U.S. Supreme Court that would strike down Roe v. Wade. The decades-old abortion ruling says the Constitution protects a woman’s right to an abortion before viability, a standard Mississippi argues is arbitrary.

But viability has nothing to do with the vast majority of abortions; more than 99% of abortions occur at or before 21 weeks, according to federal statistics. So although viability is central to abortion law, the crux of the argument around the procedure comes down to disagreement about whether and in which cases someone should have the choice to terminate a pregnancy.

Meanwhile, viability is a growing real concern for those who care for premature babies as science keeps moving the line lower and lower.

And in this realm, too, it’s ethically fraught.

Beyond the risk of death, babies at “borderline viability” are highly susceptible to disabilities such as cerebral palsy, cognitive impairments, blindness and severe lung problems. Often, parents and doctors face a heartbreaking question they must answer together: How do they decide what to do?

“There’s a lot of things we can do, a lot of interventions,” said Dr. Barbara Warner, a newborn medicine expert at Washington University medical school in St. Louis. “Should we do them?”

In the case of Butler’s twins, the answer was yes. Curtis and C’Asya Means came into the world on July 5, 2020, at the University of Alabama hospital, each weighing less than a pound and small enough to fit in an adult’s hand.

Their divergent paths reflected both sides of extreme prematurity.

C’Asya lived just one day. Butler keeps her ashes in a tiny pink-and-silver urn.

Curtis became the earliest surviving “micropreemie” in the world – teething, trying solid foods and tooling around the house in his walker.

‘A SLOW EVOLUTION’

Each year in the U.S, about 380,000 babies are born prematurely, or earlier than 37 weeks of a typical 40-week pregnancy. About 19,000 arrive before the third trimester.

Babies born so soon faced bleak prospects until the latter half of the 20th century. That’s when incubator technology evolved, neonatology became a specialty and two medications began to be widely used: steroids during pregnancy to speed up fetal lung development, and synthetic “surfactant” given to babies to keep their airways open.

“I don’t think I could point to a single new technology or new medication or approach that has been the driver of keeping infants alive at these really low limits of gestation,” said Dr. Elizabeth Foglia, a neonatologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “It’s just a slow evolution” that cascaded into “a sea change.”

For many years, the “edge of viability” remained around 24 weeks, she said. During her pediatric residency from 2006-2009, “those were the patients that were sort of the earliest we would intervene and the patients we were most worried about.”

Nicholas Hall’s twins, Graham and Reece, were born at 25 weeks in 2006. Graham spent his 45-day life connected to a breathing tube, getting nutrients through an intravenous drip. “He could never rest,” said the Bloomington, Indiana, dad, who with his now ex-wife started a nonprofit to support parents called Graham’s Foundation.

Reece survived. But she spent 119 days in the NICU, needed emergency surgery for a buildup of fluid in her brain, and came home on oxygen. She still has a hearing problem called auditory processing disorder.

Complications remain common even as three decades of research show a progressive increase in survival rates for babies born at 22 to 25 weeks. Care for these babies also remains intense.

Even today, up to a year in the hospital isn’t unusual for micropreemies, and costs can run into the millions of dollars. Most of these infants spend time on ventilators, are warmed in isolettes and get fluids and nutrition through tubes. Their skin, as delicate as a burn victim’s, needs meticulous care.

Hospitals have differing practices on when to provide this sort of care to the very youngest micropreemies, which leads to varying survival rates. One survey found that about six in 10 U.S. hospitals actively treated 22-week babies in 2019, up from 26% in 2007. The data doesn’t include the few surviving babies born during the 21st week of pregnancy.

“If you’re an institution that’s fully committed to resuscitation at 22 weeks, then studies show pretty clearly that just by virtue of offering the full spectrum of intensive care, you are going to be more likely to have babies who survive,” Foglia said.

TINY FIGHTER

Sims, a neonatologist who is also a pediatrics professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said it would have been “perfectly reasonable” not to try to save Butler’s twins. In such cases, whether to resuscitate or continue lifesaving care is a shared decision between parents and the medical team.

“But even when we don’t try anything, a baby that’s trying to live will show you that. You’ll see that the baby’s trying to take a breath,” Sims said. “We support the babies that give us those signs.”

As soon as Curtis and C’Asya arrived, Sims gave each a little bit of oxygen. Curtis’ heart rate quickly rose. His smaller sister didn’t respond as well. Other medical measures for the twins, such as ventilators and surfactant, couldn’t compensate for her immature lungs.

“They told me it was up to me to make the call” about withdrawing treatment, Butler said. “I actually was praying silently to myself. God came to me and told me, ‘If you give me C’Asya, I’ll give you Curtis.’”

Butler cradled her daughter for hours after she died. It was the first time she held her.

Curtis stayed in the NICU for nine more months. Butler made the 90-minute trek from her home in rural Eutaw to Birmingham several times a week. She read books to Curtis and often held him inside her shirt so his skin touched hers.

Curtis went home tethered to oxygen. Butler, a single mom with two older kids, made sure the levels didn’t drop, gave him medicines five times a day and regularly set his feeding pump to dispense the right amount of food into a tube in his stomach.

More than a year later, Curtis is down to one medication for high blood pressure and two inhalers. He can be unhooked from oxygen for an hour a day. At 22 months old and around 20 pounds, he’s an active toddler who crawls, pulls himself up and plays with his older sister and brother.

When Butler woke him one morning, he fussed and fumbled with the feeding tube that still provides much of his nutrition.

But soon he was scooting his walker around the kitchen and curiously opening cabinets as Butler scrambled eggs, one of a growing number of soft and pureed foods he can now ingest.

“Wanna eat-eat?” she coaxed, offering a tiny bit of egg.

He eagerly popped it in his mouth, then smiled and grabbed a much bigger helping from her plate.

BITTERSWEET PROGRESS

In the future, doctors expect more micropreemies like Curtis to survive.

One reason? Saving them will become more accepted and common. Last year, the influential American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists updated its recommendations to say steroids before birth may be considered if resuscitation is planned at 22 weeks. Previously, the measure was not recommended for babies that young.

And down the road, scientists are working on lifesaving equipment tailored to smaller bodies and an artificial womb they hope could someday grow a fetus outside of a person.

Such advances are sure to deepen ethical dilemmas.

“There always will be a limit of viability. Where that limit is may change over time as technology evolves and our ability to care for less and less mature babies evolves,” Foglia said. But wherever that limit is, “survival may be possible but not guaranteed. And survival without disability is certainly not guaranteed.”

Hall said doctors shouldn’t keep trying to move the viability line down until they can truly reduce the long-term medical problems associated with extremely premature babies born today.

Cori Laemmle of Fort Wayne, Indiana, who gave birth to twin boys in 2020 at 22 weeks, said decisions about whether to treat such infants should consider the individual circumstances and be guided by a question: “Are the interventions going to do more harm than good?”

Washington University’s Warner said everyone needs to think about how the babies might suffer.

This was why Laemmle and her husband decided to let one of her twins go — he was crashing with a collapsed lung. The other twin responded well to treatment. He’s now getting speech and physical therapy and hitting the usual milestones in all areas but speech.

Doctors are hopeful that Curtis Means – he has his father’s last name – will also continue to thrive. Dr. Brett Turner, his pulmonologist, now sees him every two or three months to manage his ongoing lung disease.

“As he grows … those visits will slowly all be able to be spaced out,” Turner said. “Hopefully, he’ll require fewer and fewer doctors to care for him.”

At home, his 35-year-old mother spends less time tending to Curtis’ medical needs and more time just hanging out with him.

One afternoon, she pulled Curtis out of his walker and into her arms. He grabbed at her face. She kissed his hand. She pulled down his Winnie-the-Pooh shirt, and they touched palms in a high five.

Butler, who is studying to be a cosmetologist, envisions Curtis going to school in a few years and becoming a doctor someday.

But as he grows, she always wants him to remember the twin who will never see such a future.

“Anytime he has a party, it’s going to be about her too,” with both names on the cakes, Butler said. “I mention her name every day for him, to let him know he was a twin and ‘your twin is your angel.’ And when he gets bigger, I’m going to get him a necklace where he can keep her ashes with him.”

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Retired AP photographer Ut gives pope ‘Napalm Girl’ photo

By NICOLE WINFIELD

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Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Nick Ut, center, flanked by Kim Phuc, left, holds the" Napalm Girl", his Pulitzer Prize winning photo as they wait to meet with Pope Francis during the weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square at The Vatican, Wednesday, May 11, 2022. Ut and UNESCO Ambassador Kim Phuc are in Italy to promote the photo exhibition "From Hell to Hollywood" resuming Ut's 51 years of work at the Associated Press, including the 1973 Pulitzer-winning photo of Kim Phuc fleeing her village after it was accidentally hit by napalm bombs dropped by South Vietnamese forces. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Retired Associated Press photographer Nick Ut met Wednesday with Pope Francis and gave him a copy of his Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a young Vietnamese girl running naked down the road after a napalm attack.

Ut and Kim Phuc Phan Thi, whose terror the AP photographer captured on June 8, 1972 during the Vietnam War, greeted Francis at the end of his general audience Wednesday in St. Peter’s Square, ahead of the 50th anniversary of the iconic image.

Kim Phuc, who later resettled in Canada and raised a family there, had met the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio several years ago in his native Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she had travelled as part of her work as a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. culture agency.

“He looked at the picture and remembered her right away,” Ut told AP in the piazza moments after the encounter. Kim Phuc said she wasn’t sure Francis would remember her, given the hundreds of people he meets every day.

“But he remembered very well. He said ‘I remember you, I know you. Do you remember we met each other in Buenos Aires?’ and I said ‘Yes I do. I said ‘God bless you with good health and for all you have done for peace.’”

Ut and Kim Phuc were in Italy to open an exhibit of his photographs in Milan ahead of the anniversary of his “Napalm Girl” photograph. Such images have a potent effect on Francis: He has previously handed out pocket-sized copies of another wartime photograph of a young Nagasaki boy carrying his dead brother on his back that was taken by an American military photographer during World War II.

Francis, who named himself after the peace-loving St. Francis of Assisi, had printed on the photo “The fruit of war.”

Ut was only 21 when he took the Vietnam photo, then set his camera aside to rush the 9-year-old Kim Phuc to a hospital, where doctors saved her life.

“It was only me with my driver there, then I said I don’t want to leave because I know she will die,” Ut recalled. “Then I picked her up, put her in the van and I brought her to the hospital.”

Ut later became a AP photographer based in Los Angeles, photographing A-list celebrities until he retired from the news agency in 2017.

Recalling the horror of that day, Kim Phuc said that 50 years ago she was known to the world only as a victim of war.

“But right now, 50 years later, I am no longer a victim of war. I am a mother, a grandmother and a survivor calling out for peace,” she said.

Most Great Barrier Reef coral studied this year was bleached

By ROD McGUIRK

In this photo supplied by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA), a diver swims past coral on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, Oct. 18, 2016. More than 90% of Great Barrier Reef coral surveyed in 2022 was bleached in the fourth such mass event in seven years in the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem, Australian government scientists said in its an annual report released late Tuesday, May 10, 2022. (M. Curnock/GBRMPA via AP)


CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — More than 90% of Great Barrier Reef coral surveyed this year was bleached in the fourth such mass event in seven years in the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem, Australian government scientists said.

Bleaching is caused by global warming, but this is the reef’s first bleaching event during a La Niña weather pattern, which is associated with cooler Pacific Ocean temperatures, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Authority said in its annual report released late Tuesday that found 91% of the areas surveyed were affected.

Bleaching in 2016, 2017 and 2020 damaged two-thirds of the coral in the famed reef off Australia’s eastern coast.

Coral bleaches as a heat stress response and scientists hope most of the coral will recover from the current event, said David Wachenfeld, chief scientist at the authority, which manages the reef ecosystem.

“The early indications are that the mortality won’t be very high,” Wachenfeld said on Wednesday.

“We are hoping that we will see most of the coral that is bleached recover and we will end up with an event rather more like 2020 when, yes, there was mass bleaching, but there was low mortality,” Wachenfeld added.

The bleaching events in 2016 and 2017 led to “quite high levels of coral mortality,” Wachenfeld said.

Simon Bradshaw, a researcher at the Climate Council, an Australia-based group that tracks climate change, said the report demonstrated the reef’s survival depended on steep global emission cuts within the decade.

“This is heartbreaking. This is deeply troubling,” Bradshaw said. “It shows that our Barrier Reef really is in very serious trouble indeed.”

Last December, the first month of the Southern Hemisphere summer, was the hottest December the reef had experienced since 1900. A “marine heatwave” had set in by late February, the report said.

A United Nations delegation visited the reef in March to assess whether the reef’s World Heritage listing should be downgraded due to the ravages of climate change.

In July last year, Australia garnered enough international support to defer an attempt by UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural organization, to downgrade the reef’s World Heritage status to “in danger“ because of damage caused by climate change.

But the question will be back on the World Heritage Committee’s agenda at its next annual meeting.

The Great Barrier Reef accounts for around 10% of the world’s coral reef ecosystems and was named because of the extensive hazards it posed to 18th century seafarers. The network of more than 2,500 reefs covers 348,000 square kilometers (134,000 square miles).

Coral is made up of tiny animals called polyps that are fed by microscopic algae that live inside the reefs and are sensitive to changes in water temperatures.

The algae provide the reefs with their kaleidoscope of colors and produce sugars through photosynthesis that provide the coral with most of its nutrients.

Rising ocean temperatures turn the chemicals that the algae produce into toxins. The coral turns white as it effectively spits the poisonous algae out.

Heat stress beyond a few weeks can lead the coral to die of starvation.

The latest bleaching is an unwelcome reminder of the differences in climate change policy among Australian politicians.

The conservative government seeking reelection on May 21 has less ambitious emission reduction targets than the center-left opposition is promising.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Liberal Party aims to reduce Australia’s emissions by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2030.

The opposition Labor Party has promised to reduce emissions by 43% by the end of the decade.

Morrison was widely criticized at the U.N. climate conference last November for failing to set a more ambitious target.

The environmental group Greenpeace Australia Pacific said in a statement the extent of the latest bleaching was “another damning indictment of the Morrison government which has failed to protect the reef and exacerbated the problem through its support of fossil fuels.”

A BIG DEAL
EA Sports and FIFA end partnership, both eye new video games

FILE - FIFA President Gianni Infantino speaks during an interview conducted with The Associated Press in Doha, Qatar, March 29, 2022. Infantino said migrant workers gain pride from hard work when he was questioned on Monday, May 2, 2022, about workers suffering in Qatar while building World Cup infrastructure. (AP Photo/Lujain Jo, File)


ZURICH (AP) — Electronic Arts will stop making its hugely successful FIFA video game in its current name, marking a split in one of soccer’s most successful and lucrative partnerships after the sides failed to strike a new licensing deal.

Instead, the California company said Tuesday that EA Sports FC will be introduced from 2023 after it creates the final game in partnership with FIFA later this year.

Licensing rights for the game earn FIFA about $150 million annually — the single biggest commercial earner in its expected $7 billion total revenue from 2019-2022 — though FIFA struck a defiant tone in a statement published hours after the announcement of losing that income.

FIFA promised a “number of new non-simulation games (that) are already under production” and will launch ahead of the 2022 World Cup that kicks off in Qatar in November.

FIFA said it plans to create a “new gaming model” and cited the recent launch of its streaming service FIFA+.

“I can assure you that the only authentic, real game that has the FIFA name will be the best one available for gamers and football fans,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino said in the statement.

EA has been producing a FIFA game for nearly 30 years and its fond association with tens of millions of gamers worldwide helped the Zurich-based organization’s brand when it was tarnished amid a wave of arrests of soccer officials in 2015.

For generations of young people, FIFA has means a video game rather than a sports institution.

Though EA Sports FC will be unable to include FIFA content including the World Cup, it retains licensing deals with prime soccer competitions including the English Premier League and the UEFA-organized Champions League.

The EA announcement showed the strength of those partnerships with warm comments from executives from the Premier League, UEFA and Spain’s La Liga while a coordinated release of tweets posted by dozens of soccer clubs used the slogan “We’re In The Club” to align with the EA Sports FC brand.

“We’re thankful for our many years of great partnership with FIFA,” EA CEO Andrew Wilson said. “The future of global football is very bright, and fandom around the world has never been stronger.”

Wilson promised “even more innovative and authentic experiences to the growing football audience” while its soon-to-be rival FIFA spoke of creating ”new, interactive experiences to fans across the globe.”

“The interactive gaming and e-sports sector is on a path of unrivaled growth and diversification,” Infantino said. “FIFA’s strategy is to ensure we can make the most of all future options and ensure a wide range of products and opportunities for gamers, fans, member associations and partners.”

Watery graves recall early Las Vegas’ organized crime days
By KEN RITTERyesterday


1 of 18

A formerly sunken boat sits on cracked earth hundreds of feet from what is now the shoreline on Lake Mead at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Monday, May 9, 2022, near Boulder City, Nev. Lake Mead is receding and Sin City is awash with mob lore after a second set of human remains emerged within a week from the depths of the drought-stricken Colorado River reservoir just a short drive from the Las Vegas Strip.

 (AP Photo/John Locher)


LAS VEGAS (AP) — Stories about long-departed Las Vegas organized crime figures are surfacing after a second set of unidentified human remains were revealed as the water level falls on drought-stricken Lake Mead.

The reservoir on the Colorado River is about a 30-minute drive from the mob-founded Las Vegas Strip.

“There’s no telling what we’ll find in Lake Mead,” former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said Monday. “It’s not a bad place to dump a body.”

Goodman was a defense attorney who represented Mafia figures including ill-fated Anthony “Tony the Ant” Spilotro before serving three terms as a martini-toting mayor who made public appearances with a showgirl on each arm.

He declined to speculate about who might turn up in the vast reservoir formed by Hoover Dam between Nevada and Arizona.

“I’m relatively sure it was not Jimmy Hoffa,” he laughed, referring to the former labor boss who disappeared in 1975. But he added that a lot of his former clients seemed interested in “climate control” — mob speak for keeping the lake level up and bodies down in their watery graves.

Instead, the world now has climate change, and as a result the surface of Lake Mead has dropped more than 170 feet (52 meters) since 1983. The lake that slakes the thirst of 40 million people in cities, farms and tribes across seven Southwestern states is down to about 30% of capacity.

“If the lake goes down much farther, it’s very possible we’re going to have some very interesting things surface,” said Michael Green, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas history professor whose father dealt blackjack for decades at casinos including the Stardust and Showboat.

“I wouldn’t bet the mortgage that we’re going to solve who killed Bugsy Siegel,” Green said, referring to the infamous gangster who opened the Flamingo casino in 1946 on what became the Strip. Siegel was shot dead in 1947 in Beverly Hills, California. His assassin has never been identified.

“But I would be willing to bet there are going to be a few more bodies,” Green said.

Last month. the dropping lake level exposed Las Vegas’ uppermost drinking water intake, forcing the regional water authority to switch to a deep-lake intake it completed in 2020 to continue to supply casinos, suburbs and 2.4 million residents and 40 million tourists per year.

The following weekend, boaters spotted the decomposed body of a man in a rusted barrel stuck in the mud of newly exposed shoreline.

The corpse has not been identified, but Las Vegas police say he had been shot, probably between the mid-1970s and early 1980s, according to the shoes found with him. The death is being investigated as a homicide.

A few days later, a second barrel was found by a KLAS-TV news crew, not far from the first. It was empty.

On Saturday, two sisters from the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson were paddle boarding on the lake near a former marina resort and noticed bones on a newly surfaced sand bar more than 9 miles (14.5 kilometers) from the barrels.

Lindsey Melvin, who took photos of their find, said they thought at first it was the skeleton of a bighorn sheep native to the region. A closer look revealed a human jaw with teeth. They called park rangers and the National Park Service confirmed in a statement that the bones were human.

There was no immediate evidence of foul play, Las Vegas police said Monday, and they are not investigating. A homicide probe would be opened if the Clark County coroner determines the death was suspicious, the department said in a statement.

Geoff Schumacher, vice president of The Mob Museum, said he expects “a lot” of whatever bodies lie beneath the lake’s surface will turn out to be drowning victims. But he said it’s clear whoever was in the barrel was a target.

Stuffing a body in a barrel has a “signature of a mob hit,” said Schumacher, whose museum is in a renovated historic downtown Las Vegas post office and federal building. It opened in 2012 as The National Museum of Organized Crime & Law Enforcement.

He and Green both cited the death of John “Handsome Johnny” Roselli, a mid-1950s Las Vegas mobster who disappeared in 1976. A few days later his body was found in a steel drum floating off the coast of Miami.

THE DEAD FISH A CLASSIC MOB TROPE

A dead fish that used to be underwater sits on cracked earth above the water level on Lake Mead at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Monday, May 9, 2022, near Boulder City, Nev. Las Vegas is being flooded with lore about organized crime after a second set of human remains emerged within a week from the depths of the drought-stricken Colorado River reservoir just a 30-minute drive from the notoriously mob-founded Strip. 

(AP Photo/John Locher)

David Kohlmeier, a former police officer who now co-hosts a Las Vegas podcast and fledgling TV show called “The Problem Solver Show,” said Monday that after offering a $5,000 reward last week for qualified divers to find barrels in the lake, he heard from people in San Diego and Florida willing to try.

But National Park Service officials said that’s not allowed and that there are hundreds of barrels in the depths, some dating to the construction of Hoover Dam in the 1930s.

Kohlmeier said he also heard from families of missing people and about cases like a man suspected of killing his mother and brother in 1987, a hotel employee who disappeared in 1992, and a father from Utah who vanished in the 1980s.

Green said the discoveries have people talking not only about mob hits, but about bringing relief and closure to grieving families.

“They’re going to think we’re going to solve every mob murder. In fact, we may see some,” he said. “But it’s also worth remembering that the mob did not like murders to take place in the Las Vegas area, because they did not like bad publicity going out under the Las Vegas dateline.”

These photos of Saturday, May 7, 2022, provided by Lindsey Melvin of Henderson, Nev., shows human remains she and her sister discovered on a sandbar that recently surfaced as Lake Mead recedes. A closer look revealed a human jaw with teeth. The National Park Service confirmed in a statement that the bones are human.

 (Lindsey Melvin via AP)

Whatever story emerges about the body in the barrel, Goodman predicted it will add to the lore of a city that needed the creation of Lake Mead to sprout from the creosote bush-covered desert to become a marquee gambling mecca with a metro area home to about 2.25 million people.

“When I was the mayor, every time I went to a groundbreaking, I’d begin to shake for fear that somebody I may have run into over the years will be uncovered,” he joked.

Spilotro, Goodman’s one-time client, represented the Chicago mob in Las Vegas in the 1970s. He headed a crew dubbed the “Hole in the Wall” gang for drilling through walls to gain entry to homes and businesses. Spilotro’s body and the body of his brother, Michael Spilotro, were found in June 1986 by a farmer plowing a cornfield in northwest Indiana.

Tony the Ant served as the model for the character Nicky Santoro, portrayed by actor Joe Pesci, in Martin Scorsese’s 1995 movie“Casino.” Goodman played himself in the film.

“We have a very interesting background,” Goodman told The Associated Press. “It certainly adds to the mystique of Las Vegas.”

Yellen trip to Capitol detours into tense abortion debate

By FATIMA HUSSEIN

yesterday

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on monitor, questions Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen during a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing, Tuesday, May 10, 2022, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Tom Williams/Pool via AP)


WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s appearance before a Senate committee took an unexpected and tense detour into the abortion debate Tuesday when senators questioned her about the potential impact of an abortion ban on the American economy.

“I believe that eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades,” Yellen said in response to a question from Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J. He had introduced the topic with a question on how an abortion ban could financially harm women.

Yellen’s answer drew a sharp response from Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who asked her, “Did you say that ending the life of a child is good for the labor force participation rate?”

“I think people can disagree on the issue of being ‘pro-life’ or ‘pro-abortion’ — but framing it in the labor force participation rate feels callous to me,” he said, adding that the conversation “to me seems harsh.”

Yellen responded: “This is not harsh, this is the truth.”

She continued by saying an abortion ban “deprives them of the ability to continue their education,” and those impacted are most commonly young Black women.

The line of questioning at the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee came after a Supreme Court draft opinion leaked last week that suggests the court is poised to throw out the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights ruling that has stood for a half-century.

The hearing also touched on inflation, sanctions imposed on Russia and rising energy costs. Yellen said the U.S. “is focused on everything we can do to bring inflation down.”

The abortion issue came up multiple times. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., said he disagreed with Yellen’s perspective, and offered his own economic analysis.

“I look at low birth rates and an aging population,” he said, arguing that there are negative economic impacts from abortion.

A number of economic analyses indicate that limitations on access to abortion can negatively impact people financially and in other ways.

Sarah Miller, a researcher at the University of Michigan, authored a paper with two others on the impact of abortion restrictions. The trio evaluated data on women who sought abortions at 30 clinics in 21 states but were turned away because they were past the clinics’ gestation limit. Two-thirds ended up giving birth.

“As we show in our paper,” Miller said, an abortion ban “will have pretty severe economic consequences for women to keep their head above water,” adding that “there could also be physical and mental health consequences.”

Committee chair Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, ended by saying that if Roe v. Wade were overturned, every woman’s decision to determine her reproductive future and health would be “handed over to politicians.”

“It shouldn’t be handed over to me, it shouldn’t be handed over to Secretary Yellen, and it shouldn’t be handed over to Mitch McConnell,” he said, referring to the Senate Republican leader.

SEE 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/05/yellen-says-letting-states-ban-abortion.html

How improper farming methodology and drought caused the catastrophic Dust Bowl

Randi Mann - 6h ago


This Day In Weather History is a daily podcast by Chris Mei from The Weather Network, featuring stories about people, communities and events and how weather impacted them.

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On Friday, May 11, 1934, tons of topsoil blew from the Great Plains region of the United States all the way to New York, Boston, and Atlanta.

This was an event associated with the Dust Bowl.


© Provided by The Weather NetworkHow improper farming methodology and drought caused the catastrophic Dust Bowl"A farmer and his two sons during a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936. Iconic photo taken by Arthur Rothstein." Courtesy of Wikipedia

The Dust Bowl was a series of severe dust storms during the 1930s. It was caused by the combination of drought and inaccurate farming methodology. Farmers deeply plowed the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains, which displaced the native grass that usually traps soil and moisture during droughts and heavy winds.

Farmers were able to widely convert arid grassland to cropland with new technologies like gasoline-powered tractors.


© Provided by The Weather NetworkHow improper farming methodology and drought caused the catastrophic Dust Bowl"A dust storm approaches Stratford, Texas, in 1935." Courtesy of Wikipedia

During the 1930s drought, the plowed soil turned to dust. Winds blew that dust that created large blackout clouds. The dust clouds were nicknamed "black blizzards" and "black rollers."

The black blizzards travelled as far east as New York City. The dust plumes reduced visibility to one meter.

Edward Stanley, an editor for the Associated Press, was rewriting another reporter's coverage of the storm and coined the term "Dust Bowl".


© Provided by The Weather NetworkHow improper farming methodology and drought caused the catastrophic Dust Bowl"Buried machinery in a barn lot; Dallas, South Dakota, May 1936." Courtesy of Wikipedia

The impacts of the catastrophic conditions were exasperated by the Great Depression. In 1935, the drought caused families to leave their farms and move to other areas to seek work. Areas in Texas, Oklahoma and other areas in the region were deserted because of the Dust Bowl conditions.

The dust storms left more than 500,000 Americans homeless. Some residents in the Great Plains areas died from dust pneumonia or malnutrition.

The Dust Bowl has been featured in cultural work such as the novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck.

To learn more about the Dust Bowl, listen to today's episode of "This Day In Weather History."


Thumbnail: "A dust storm approaches Stratford, Texas, in 1935." Courtesy of NOAA

Charles Noble | The Western Producer

https://www.producer.com/news/charles-noble

When 30-year-old Charles Noble came to Canada from North Dakota in 1903, most farm work was hard, manual labour using oxen to pull a plow through the.

The Groundbreaking Legacy of Versatile Tillage 

https://www.versatile-ag.com/the-groundbreaking-legacy

The product is an immediate success and some years later the first Noble Cultivator factory opens in Nobleford, Alberta. The Noble Blade is designed to shear ...

Wide blade sweep plow - SARE - Sustainable Agriculture Research ... 

https://www.sare.org/publications/steel-in-the-field/dryland-crop-tools/wide-blade-sweep-plow

Overview: Often generically called 'Noble blades' due to the Canadian manufacturer, these implements are perhaps the ultimate steel force for weed ...