Pricey Winston Churchill portrait swapped with fake at Canada hotel, staff don’t notice for months

According to a website run by Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh, who had created the portrait in 1941, the portrait is "one of the most widely reproduced images in the history of photography.

India Today Web Desk New Delhi

August 28, 2022

The photo of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's scowling face made its way to the Bank of England's five pound note in 2016. (Credit: Yousaf Karsh)


HIGHLIGHTS

The original portrait of the former British PM hung in the Fairmont Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa

Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh had created the portrait in 1941

An investigation into the portrait's disappearance is underway


A famous portrait of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, estimated to cost more than $100,000, was allegedly stolen from a hotel in Ottawa and replaced with a copy, skipping the attention of the staff for close to eight months.

The original hung in the Fairmont Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa until a date officials believe likely ranging between December 25, 2021, and January 6, 2022, the hotel's general manager Geneviève Dumas told CTV, an affiliate of CNN.

According to a website run by Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh, who had created the portrait in 1941, the portrait is "one of the most widely reproduced images in the history of photography." The photo made its way to the Bank of England's five pound note in 2016.

"We are deeply saddened by this brazen act," Dumas wrote in a Facebook post. "The hotel is incredibly proud to house this stunning Karsh collection, which was securely installed in 1998."

Last weekend, hotel employees noticed the photograph was hung improperly, and the frame didn't match others in the space. Hotel officials then used photos sent in by the public to establish when the original portrait and frame were removed.

The Chateau Laurier Hotel's marketing director said an investigation into the portrait's disappearance is underway.

Robert Wittman, a former art crime investigator with the FBI, told CTV that when a situation like this occurs, "it's not a shoplifting, it's not just a burglary; it's someone from the inside who had access, who knew what they were looking for, knew what the security measures were that were protecting the piece and were able to defeat those measures because they had inside information."

The black and white photograph captures Churchill's scowling moments after Karsh plucked a cigar from the prime minister's mouth to snap the shot.

Talking about the photograph, Karsh wrote, "By the time I got back to my camera, he looked so belligerent he could have devoured me. It was at that instant that I took the photograph. I knew... that it was an important picture, but I could hardly have dreamed that it would become one of the most widely reproduced images in the history of photography."

The photographer lived and ran his studio from the hotel for two decades, according to his estate, and when he moved away, Karsh left the hotel a collection of his photographs -- including the one of Churchill.

The Fairmont Château Laurier has urged anyone with information on the stolen photograph to immediately contact local authorities.

Fake heiress ‘infiltrated Mar-a-Lago inner circle’

An aerial view of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida. Picture by Marco Bello/Reuters


Patrick Sawer in Florida
August 28 2022 

A Ukrainian woman posed as a member of the Rothschild banking dynasty to infiltrate Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and gain influence with his inner circle on behalf of Russian crime gangs, it has been claimed.

The FBI and Canadian law enforcement agencies have launched a major investigation into the activities of Inna Yashchyshyn, who is said to have told Florida socialites and acquaintances of the former US president that she was heiress Anna de Rothschild.

Her deception allegedly led to her being “fawned all over” by guests at Mr Trump’s Florida home and private club who were captivated by her boasts about a Monaco property portfolio and family vineyard.

Her presence at Mar-a-Lago raises fresh concerns over the classified documents kept by the former president at the waterfront mansion. On Friday, it emerged that documents held in his basement may have contained US secrets obtained by spies in the field.

A redacted version of the 32-page FBI affidavit which led to a raid on Mar-a-Lago on August 8, released by a court on Friday, showed that 14 of the 15 boxes recovered contained classified documents, including some marked “HCS [HUMINT Control System]”.

Ed Martin, a former US Treasury special agent who spent more than two decades in criminal intelligence, said: “That’s his residence. She shouldn’t have been in there.”

Ms Yaschyshyn is believed to have been taken to Mar-a-Lago for the first time by a donor called Elchanan Adamker in 2021, posing for a photo with Mr Trump the next day.

Read MoreTrump’s legal problems put Truth Social in financial peril

It has now emerged she is actually the Ukrainian-born daughter of truck driver Oleksandr Yaschyshyn, who lives in Buffalo Grove, Illinois.

The 33-year-old faces an FBI investigation over a charity she was president of called the United Hearts of Mercy.

It was founded by Florida-based Russian businessman Valeriy Tarasenko in Canada in 2015, but the FBI alleges it has been used as a front to fundraise for Russian organised crime gangs.

Ms Yaschyshyn is also accused of obtaining fake IDs, including a US passport and multiple drivers’ licences, using her assumed identity as a member of the Rothschild family.

John LeFevre, a former investment banker, who recalled meeting her by the Mar-a-Lago pool on May 1 last year, said after she arrived driving a Mercedes-Benz SUV, told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “It wasn’t just dropping the family name. She talked about vineyards and family estates and growing up in Monaco. It was a near perfect ruse and she played the part.” Mr LeFevre added that Mar-a-Lago members “fawned all over her and because of the Rothschild mystique, they never probed”.

Ms Yashchyshyn was seen the next day rubbing shoulders with Mr Trump and Lindsey Graham, the senior US senator for South Carolina, at Mr Trump’s nearby West Palm Beach golf club.

Photographs show her with the two men and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the Trump aide and fiancee of Donald Trump Jr. In video footage from the day she met Mr Trump, a man is heard saying: “Anna, you’re a Rothschild. You can afford a million dollars for a picture with you and Trump.”

The Post-Gazette reports that Ms Yashchyshyn was invited by Trump supporter Mr Adamker, who runs a financial services firm.

Members of the Trump inner circle were eventually told Ms Yashchyshyn was not an heiress by Dean Lawrence, a Florida-based music director, who met her in her role as president of the Rothschild Media Label. She was promoting Mr Tarasenko’s teenage daughter, whose stage name is Sofiya Rothschild.

Ms Yashchyshyn denies the claims against her, telling the Post-Gazette: “I think there is some misunderstanding. That’s all fake, and nothing happened.”

She claims any passports or driver’s licences using the Rothschild name have been fabricated by Mr Tarasenko, which he denies. She is embroiled in a lawsuit with the 44-year-old, whose daughter she used to babysit, and says she has been framed by him. Mr Tarasenko claims she was keen to use Mar-a-Lago to find rich benefactors.

Neither the US Secret Service nor the FBI would comment on whether they were investigating Ms Yashchyshyn but sources said they had been questioned by the FBI about her.

Canadian law enforcement has confirmed she has been the subject of a major crimes unit investigation in Quebec since February.

The allegations come a day after it emerged that a Russian spy posing as a jet-set jewellery designer infiltrated Nato’s naval HQ in Italy by sleeping with officers stationed there.

FBI probes Ukrainian-born ‘heiress’ who posed as Rothschild, gained access to Trump

Inna Yashchyshyn, or ‘Anna de Rothschild,’ said to have infiltrated Mar-a-Lago, currently at center of investigation into ex-president’s removal and handling of classified files

By TOI STAFF and AGENCIESToday, 

Inna Yashchyshyn aka "Anna de Rothschild" (Youtube screenshot)

The FBI has launched an investigation into the business dealings of a Ukrainian-born woman who reportedly posed as a member of the Rothschild family, the famous Jewish international banking dynasty, and who appeared to have gained access to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and to the former US president himself under false pretenses.

An investigative piece published Friday by the Organized Crime & Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) together with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette detailed how 33-year-old Inna Yashchyshyn, a Russian-speaking immigrant to the US born in Ukraine, presented herself as banking heiress “Anna de Rothschild” and inflitrated Trump’s Florida resort, mingling with guests at the private members’ club, posing for photos with Trump, US Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and others at Mar-a-Lago functions.

The estate is currently at the center of an FBI investigation into Trump’s unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents, some of them top secret, at the property.

According to the joint report, Yashchyshyn is the daughter of an Illinois truck driver and it is unclear when she arrived in the US. Reporters of the publications posted photos of fake US and Canadian passports in the name of Anna de Rothschild bearing Yashchyshyn’s photograph, though she has denied involvement.

The FBI office in Miami and the Sûreté du Québec provincial police in Canada have launched investigations into Yashchyshyn’s dealings, specifically in relation to a charity called United Hearts of Mercy, first founded in Montreal, Canada by Moscow businessman Valery Tarasenko in 2010 with a branch in Miami in 2015. The charity claimed it helps lift children “from spiritual, social, economic, and physical poverty” in various parts of the world, the report said.

Yashchyshyn and Tarasenko are engaged in a complex, bitter legal dispute and have filed domestic violence injunctions in Florida against each other. Yashchyshyn claimed she and Tarasenko were in a relationship and that he coerced her into a scheme to wrangle funds from various mean, accusations Tarasenko denies.

This dispute appears to have revealed details about Yashchyshyn’s access to Mar-a-Lago in May 2021 for unclear reasons, according to the report.

An affidavit filed in Miami by Tarasenko in February, and cited in the report, said Yashchyshyn used “her fake identity as Anna de Rothschild to gain access to and build relationships with U.S. politicians[s], including but not limited to Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, and Eric Greitens,” in reference to the former Missouri governor.

The report said Yashchyshyn played an imposter Rothschild convincingly, according to guests who met her at the estate.

“It wasn’t just dropping the family name. She talked about vineyards and family estates and growing up in Monaco,” John LeFevre, a former investment banker and author who was at Mar-a-Lago in May 2021, told the publications.

She arrived around May 1 last year at the invitation of a connection she met through the charity, the report said. The next day, she was invited to a fundraiser at the Trump International Golf Club, near Mar-a-Lago, where she posed for pictures with Trump, Graham, and others. Later that day, she reportedly fraternized with a number of Trump associates, including Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of Donald Trump, Jr, and dined with them.

A photo obtained by the publications showed a group of people posing for the image at a restaurant including Yashchyshyn, standing behind a seated Guilfoyle.

The incident raises questions about access to Mar-a-Lago, which is both Trump’s residence and a private members club.

Charles Marino, a security consultant who once served on the Secret Service details of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, told the publications that the possible breach “highlights the complexities of having a former president living within a larger club.”

Police direct traffic outside an entrance to former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, Monday, August 8, 2022, in Palm Beach, Fla. Trump said in a lengthy statement that the FBI was conducting a search of his Mar-a-Lago estate and asserted that agents had broken open a safe. (AP Photo/Terry Renna)

“The question is was it a fraud or an intelligence threat? The fact that we are asking this question is a problem,” added Marino

The FBI launched an unprecedented raid of Trump’s palatial Florida home earlier this month under the authority of the Justice Department, which is investigating potential violations of multiple laws, including an Espionage Act statute that governs gathering, transmitting or losing national defense information. The other laws deal with the mutilation and removal of records as well as the destruction, alteration or falsification of records in federal investigations.

An aerial view of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is pictured, Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

On Friday, the FBI released an affidavit indicating that the raid was triggered by a review of 15 boxes of records previously surrendered by the former president that contained top secret information — including about human intelligence sources.

According to the affidavit, the FBI opened the investigation after the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) received 15 boxes of records in January 2022 that had been improperly removed from the White House and taken to Mar-a-Lago. It said sensitive National Defense Information was among the records recovered including 67 documents marked as confidential, 92 as secret and 25 as top secret

Did a Ukrainian spy posing as a young mum really sneak into Russia to murder a Putin ally?

By Lucia Stein, Rebecca Armitage and Lucy Sweeney

Just days after Russian ultra-nationalist Darya Dugina died in a fiery explosion, the nation's principal spy agency claimed to have cracked the case with remarkable speed.

Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin (right) at the funeral of his daughter, Darya Dugina (pictured), who was killed in a car explosion on a road outside Moscow on 20 August 2022. 

Photo: Anadolu Agency / Evgenii Bugubaev via AFP

Giving details that could have been lifted straight from a James Bond film, the Federal Security Service (FSB) outlined how it believed she was murdered.

It claimed to have evidence that a mother serving in the Ukrainian National Guard's Azov regiment had slipped into Moscow on orders from Kyiv.

Russia designated the Azov military unit, which fights alongside the Ukrainian army in the country's east, a "terrorist" group earlier this month.

After crossing the border using false number plates, the woman dyed her blonde hair a dark brown to avoid detection.

She and her 12-year-old daughter then spent a month stalking the vocal Kremlin supporter, the spy agency said.

"In order to organise Dugina's murder and obtain information about her lifestyle, [she] and her daughter rented an apartment in Moscow in the block where the deceased lived," the FSB claimed in a statement.

After learning her habits, the alleged assassin planted a bomb under the driver's seat of Dugina's Land Cruiser four-wheel drive.

The 29-year-old was driving home after attending a music festival with her father when the FSB claims the Ukrainian spy finally made her move.

She remotely detonated the device, killing Dugina instantly.

"She was a journalist, scientist, philosopher, war correspondent, she honestly served the people, the fatherland, she proved by deed what it means to be a patriot of Russia," President Vladimir Putin said of her murder.

The FSB claims that Dugina was targeted because she comes from a prominent family.

The FSB named a culprit in the car bomb attack just days after Darya Dugina died. Photo: Russian Investigative Committee handout via AFP

Her father, Alexander Dugin, is a far-right ideologue who believes that Russia is at the heart of a Eurasian empire countering Western decadence.

Some claim he is "Putin's brain", convincing the Russian leader over years that invading Ukraine was his destiny.

Others say he's a fringe-dweller with minimal influence, who somehow built a mythical reputation outside Russia, akin to a modern-day Rasputin.

Unverified video appears to show Alexander Dugin, who was just up the road when his daughter's car exploded, staggering past debris and gripping his head in horror when he arrived at the scene.

But as howls of outrage and vows of reprisals were unleashed in Moscow, the FSB said the Ukrainian assassin was already making a dash for the border in her grey Mini Cooper.

They released a slew of details of the woman they claimed to be the killer: her passport photo, images from her social media accounts, as well as CCTV footage showing her crossing into Estonia in a neon pink hoodie and oversized sunglasses.

But given the investigation cannot be independently verified, the ABC has chosen not to include the name or photos of the alleged suspect.

Russian news outlets claim the woman and her daughter were last spotted checking into a hotel in Austria before the trail went cold.

There's just one problem with the FSB's account: Kremlin critics say it doesn't make any sense.
Who killed Darya Dugina?

Kyiv has strongly denied having any links to the murder, describing the FSB's hasty conclusions after a 48-hour investigation as "propaganda" from a "fictional world".

Ukraine's Azov regiment says the woman has never served in its ranks, and in fact it is, and always has been, a men-only unit.

And Estonia says no woman matching the FSB's description passed through its borders, and it hasn't had a single request from Russian authorities for information.

We may never know exactly who killed Darya Dugina or why.

Some speculate forces within the Kremlin concocted a so-called "false flag operation" to justify a new phase of the war in Ukraine, and to force potentially restless Russian elites back into line.

Others say it could be the work of an underground resistance group working to topple the Putin regime.

No matter who killed Dugina, her death has been transformed into a potential opportunity - and a potential risk - for Vladimir Putin.

And for some, it has brought back memories of the era before Putin came to power, when Russia was dominated by gang violence and instability.
Dugina's death brings back bad memories for Muscovites

The 1990s were a turbulent time in Russia. It was a decade which saw the demise of the Communist Party, failed coups, economic collapse, political upheaval and a rapid rise in violent crime.

Russia was undergoing a speedy process of reforms dubbed "shock therapy", designed to transition the Communist state into a full-fledged market economy.

But the seismic shift to Russia's economic structure resulted in crises - from 1991 to 1994 and then again from 1998 to 1999 - causing inequality to skyrocket, life expectancy to fall and long lines for food to once again become a familiar sight around the country.

Russia experienced rising inequality during the 1990s amid two economic crises. Photo: AFP

As the walls of the Soviet Union crumbled and fell, from its ashes rose Russia's gangsters.

These organised criminal groups fought over the spoils of wealth from Russia's disintegrating empire, waging bloody street battles and holding cities at gunpoint.

Car bombs, drive-by shootings and knife attacks are etched in the minds of many who lived through this violent period, often accompanied by images of thugs in leather jackets "shaking down and brutalising helpless business owners".

Veterans from the Soviet War in Afghanistan were reportedly drawn to the criminal clans, utilising their skills as snipers and special forces officers in the art of organised crime.

As government and law enforcement struggled to keep pace with the changes taking place in Russia's society, gangs operated with impunity.

"In the 1990s, criminal clans really had huge influence and were a component of our lives," Andrei D Konstantinov, a Saint Petersburg-based mafia expert, told the New York Times.

But that all changed on New Year's Eve in 1999, when a former KGB officer turned political operative was made acting president.

Vladimir Putin promised to bring stability to Russia, putting an end to the blatant violence that had defined the country for more than a decade.

But it came at a price: in exchange for peace on the streets, Putin would impose authoritarian rule.
Dugina's death does not fit in neatly to a pattern of political assassinations

Not long after Putin took office, a pattern emerged of vocal opponents of the Kremlin meeting violent ends.

Political figures and journalists were gunned down in the street or fell mysteriously ill, while high-ranking separatists in the newly claimed Chechen Republic were tortured and executed.

Political journalist Anna Politkovskaya had already been detained by Russian troops while reporting on the Chechen War and believed she was poisoned by suspected secret agents during a flight before her untimely death.

In 2006, she was found dead in the lift of her apartment building. A young man in a baseball cap had shot her in the heart before silently slipping away.

The killing of one of Putin's fiercest critics, carried out on his 54th birthday, was thought by some to have been a presumptuous gift for the president.

Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov had also been an outspoken critic of Putin's for years before he was shot dead in central Moscow in 2015.

According to investigators, a white car pulled up next to Nemtsov as he was walking across the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge. Someone inside fired seven or eight shots, hitting their target in the head and heart, killing him instantly.

Boris Nemtsov (in photo) was shot dead metres from the Kremlin in central Moscow in 2015. 

Photo: Anadolu Agency / Sergey Mihailicenko via AFP

Not all of the Kremlin's enemies died by gunfire.

After Politkovskaya was shot, former KGB agent and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko accused Putin himself of sanctioning the murder.

Two weeks later, he took a fatal sip of polonium-laced green tea at an upscale hotel in London. Russia was officially found responsible for the murder last year.

Alexei Navalny fell ill in suspiciously similar circumstances in 2020, with the Russian opposition leader narrowly surviving exposure to the nerve agent Novichok.

While no poisoned teacups or handgun-wielding strangers have yet emerged in the details surrounding Darya Dugina's death, the killing perhaps resembles the assassination of another prominent figure in the early 2000s.

Akhmad Kadyrov, father and predecessor of the current Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, died in an explosion at a football stadium in Grozny in 2004.

The former rebel leader switched sides during the Second Chechen War and was hand-picked by Vladimir Putin to lead the republic after Russia took control.

But six months after he became president, Kadyrov was killed during a Soviet Victory Day parade, when a bomb went off in the VIP section of the stadium. Experts suspected the device had been sealed inside the concrete under his seat during recent renovations.

Just as speculation has swirled in the case of Darya Dugina, various theories emerged as to the culprit behind the Kadyrov attack.

Rebel Islamist leader Shamil Basayev later claimed to have paid $US50,000 for the hit on Kadyrov.

The public death of such an ally, under heavy guard and just two days after Vladimir Putin had been re-elected as Russian president, was seen as a significant humiliation for the Kremlin.

But it also provided an opportunity for Putin to install Kadyrov's son into power. The man known as Putin's Dragon has since used that position to pulverise Chechen dissent and maintain Russia's stronghold over the region.
No matter who killed Darya, it's an opportunity for Putin

The true identity of Darya Dugina's killer may forever remain a mystery.

As former British prime minister Winston Churchill once famously said:

"Kremlin political intrigues are comparable to a bulldog fight under a rug. An outsider only hears the growling, and when he sees the bones fly out from beneath it is obvious who won."

Whether she was killed by foreign agents or people closer to home, Russia watchers have no doubt she will be transformed into a martyr.

The death of a beautiful young woman from an important family is likely to send shockwaves through the oligarchs and elites who directly benefit from Vladimir Putin's power.

"I think the message that the killing is sending, even if we cannot interpret exactly who did it and who was the target, is that you can have a terrorist act inside Moscow now in the middle of the war," Marlene Laruelle of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University told NPR.

"This means that elites are suddenly not feeling secure anymore. The war is progressively coming to them inside their territory."

Darya Dugina's death has been transformed into a potential opportunity - and a potential risk - for Vladimir Putin. Photo: ALEKSEY NIKOLSKYI

As his war in Ukraine stretches on, a terrorist attack in the heart of Moscow justifies more potentially repressive acts by the Putin regime.

"I think what a lot of people are worried about is that [Darya's killing] will be used - even if this was not the origins of it - as an excuse to go even harder against any internal opponents of the war," Brian Taylor, a political science professor at Syracuse University and an expert in Russian politics, told Vox.

Putin has already cracked down heavily on Russia's opposition, passing laws that impose up to 15-year jail terms for anyone who calls the invasion of Ukraine a "war" and virtually eradicating independent press in the country.

It's an open question as to how much further Putin could tighten the screws internally, but the swift response of pro-Kremlin commentators to Dugina's death certainly appears suspicious, according to some observers.

"The reaction … was immediate. It looks as if they were waiting for something like this to happen," Russian political analyst Yekaterina Shulman told the BBC.

Even so, the attack in Moscow may threaten the very bargain Putin has used to keep Russians from questioning his authority, especially as the war hits closer to home.

In recent weeks, Russian holidaymakers have been forced to flee attacks in occupied Crimea and there have been a series of mysterious explosions in southern Russia.

Now the bombing in the Odintsovo district has targeted "the very underbelly of Putinism".

"The night explosion scares very, very many real ideologues of war," Leonid Volkov, a close ally of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, wrote on social media.

After all, if the daughter of a high-profile figure can be killed in a fiery explosion while driving home after a music festival, is anyone safe?

- ABC

‘Truss belongs in kitchen,’ says Moscow TV pundit

ALEXANDRA KOLLANTI WOULD DISAGREE*

Propagandist described Liz Truss as ‘dangerous’. Picture by John Sibley/Reuters


James Kilner in London
August 28 2022 

It is not just British TV viewers who have seen a lot more of Liz Truss over the past couple of months as she competes to become the next British prime minister. Russians have too.

Coverage on state-owned television channels has been misogynistic and veers between presenting Ms Truss as a radical and a political lightweight.

“Liz Truss doesn’t belong in politics, but in the kitchen,” analyst Igor Korotchenko said on Rossiya One last week, claiming she was “uneducated”, “dangerous” and a less “reasonable” candidate than rival Rishi Sunak.

Vladimir Solovyov, one of the Kremlin’s chief propagandists, responded to Britain sanctioning the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church with a rant accusing Ms Truss of starting a religious war with Russia.

“She has such delusions of grandeur,” he said. “Such phantasmagoric audacity is unheard of since the times of the Tartars and the Mongols. Who does she think she is?”

Russian news has also replayed footage of what it considers to be Ms Truss betraying her weakness when she recoiled in shock after the interviewer at one of the first Conservative leadership debates fainted.

Mr Solovyov suggested that “when Britain falls”, the clip proved that Ms Truss would only be able to hold her hand to her mouth and gasp.

Another favourite Russian state TV favourite clip of Mrs Truss comes from her meeting with Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, in Moscow in February, shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine. Mr Lavrov spoke over Ms Truss, patronisingly explaining how to cope with simultaneous translations. He later described negotiating with her as like talking to a “deaf mute”.

Yesterday Ms Truss vowed to bolster Britain’s defences if she is made prime minister, including by pushing ahead with renewing Trident, as she warned “the era of complacency is over”.

Less than 20pc of Russia’s MPs are women and there has never been a woman in charge in the Kremlin, the centre of Russia’s power since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

For Francis Scarr, a journalist with BBC monitoring who analyses Russian state TV, the portrayal of Ms Truss is not a surprise. “Every slip-up she makes is amplified, with her often derided as uneducated or a poor imitation of Margaret Thatcher,” he said.

Russian TV goes after most European leaders and last week it called Sanna Marin, the Finnish prime minister, a “drug addict” and described Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, as a “little Furher” who looked up to Adolf Hitler as a “moustachioed idol”.

* EVEN IF SHE IS A REACTIONARY

Odesa goes to war with Russian culture

The monument to Catherine the Great in Odesa, Ukraine. 

Picture by Leonid Andronov

Campbell MacDiarmad
August 28 2022

In Odesa, a bronze statue gazes over the city’s famed Potemkin S teps toward the Black Sea, its chest ensconced in protective sandbags. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, citizens across the country rushed to shield their prized heritage from bombardment.

The monument to the Duc de Richelieu, a 19th-century governor who helped transform the port into a modern cosmopolitan city, was considered worth protecting. But 200 yards away, another monument — to Catherine the Great, the Russian empress who founded Odesa — provokes more ambivalence. A petition calling for its removal has received over 26,500 signatures.

In February, the threat to Odesa was existential, with the streets blockaded and the beaches mined against an anticipated invasion. For Vladimir Putin, Odesa’s Russian heritage made it a key target. Returning it to Russia would cut Ukraine off from the sea.

Six months on, the threat of invasion has receded and this summer the war in Odesa is cultural, being fought by Ukrainians who have turned against anything Russian.

Other Odesans see this cultural purge as threatening the soul and identity of Ukraine’s third largest city. Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov now finds himself in a delicate position. In a war which has turned much of Ukrainian society against everything Russian, his city must decide what links to the city’s Russian past are worth preserving.

Once the pride of the Russian empire, Odesa today is a vibrant cultural hub whose cobblestone streets are filled with baroque and rococo architecture, stylish bars and restaurants, and a world-renowned opera house.

Many of the fortifications installed in March to defend the city in the event of street fighting have been removed and life goes on with a semblance of normality. Municipal workers in blue overalls and yellow tops repair streets in which bollards and planters are painted in the colours of the Ukrainian flag.

The city’s one million inhabitants are mostly Russian speakers, who are proud of their Odesan accent and their city’s unique heritage.

Statues and street names celebrate Russian writers with links to Odesa, including Alexander Pushkin, who spent two years living in the city, and Ukrainian-born Nikolai Gogol, who wrote his classic Dead Souls while living here.

Earlier this month, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky referred the petition calling for the removal of the Catherine the Great statue to city authorities, who have formed a commission to consider the future of local landmarks honouring Russian figures.

“Personally, I don’t support a monument war at a time when our country is at war,” said Mr Trukhanov, arguing that, with emotions inflamed, any attempt to rewrite history could be polarising.

But he will put his own views to one side, he said, as the commission considers if monuments and sculptures should be moved from squares and streets to a monument park.

Peter Obukhov, a deputy in Odesa’s city parliament, has drawn up a list of statutes and street names he would want to remove as part of the city’s “derussification”.

A statue to 18th-century general Alexander Suvorov and the district named after him should go, he believes, as representing a symbol of Russian imperialism. But historical figures with a strong connection to Odesa should stay, including Pushkin and Gogol.

“Putin created this situation where Ukrainian society hates everything Russian so now we’re seeing these things in a new light,” Mr Trukhanov said, explaining how the public mood had soured on Odesa’s Russian heritage.

Since the Euromaidan uprising of 2014, Ukrainian language has emerged as the cornerstone of a national identity increasingly at odds with Russia, with the Ukrainian government introducing laws aimed at promoting its use.

Ukrainian is mandated as the language to be used in most aspects of public life, including schools, while new laws this year have restricted the availability of Russian books and music and required print outlets registered in the country to publish in Ukrainian.

 ©Telegraph Media Group Ltd 2022

Elon Musk’s ex-girlfriend Grimes questions Mark Zuckerberg’s credentials to run Metaverse

Elon Musk’s ex-girlfriend Grimes attacked Mark Zuckerberg and took to Twitter to say he is "wildly under qualified" to run the Metaverse.

India Today Web Desk New Delhi

August 28, 2022



Elon Musk with Grimes. (Photo: Reuters)

Canadian singer-songwriter and record producer Grimes attacked Mark Zuckerberg on Saturday and said he is under qualified to run the Metaverse.

She expressed her disdain over Zuckerberg’s plans to expand the company formerly known as Facebook into a metaverse pioneer, according to Page Six.

Grimes, who previously dated Elon Musk, slammed the Facebook founder’s Metaverse avatar and wrote on Twitter, “If Zuck ‘oversees the Metaverse’ it is dead and people who care about art and culture are building something else. Also this is bad art,”

She also shared the image of Zuckerberg’s metaverse avatar and criticised it saying, “The quality of this image alone speaks to how wildly under-qualified he is to build alternate reality, literally every indie game looks better.”

Zuckerberg directed a companywide shift toward the metaverse in 2021 and rebranded Facebook’s corporate name to Meta. This took place even as Facebook contends with a series of scandals over its business practices and internal policies.


According to ANI, the image Grimes criticised on Twitter was posted by Zuckerberg on Facebook last week. He later shared a different version of the avatar amid heavy

 criticism.

Brazil records worst day for Amazon fires in 15 years


By AFP
Published August 25, 2022

This photo taken on October 01, 2019 shows a fire near Itaituba, Para state, Brazil, in the Amazon rainforest - Copyright AFP PETER PARKS

The number of forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon hit a nearly 15-year high this week, according to official figures that provided the latest warning on the advancing destruction of the world’s biggest rainforest.

Satellite monitoring detected 3,358 fires on Monday, August 22, the highest number for any 24-hour period since September 2007, according to the Brazilian space agency, INPE.

The number was nearly triple that recorded on the so-called “Day of Fire” — August 10, 2019 — when farmers launched a coordinated plan to burn huge amounts of felled rainforest in the northern state of Para.

Then, fires sent thick gray smoke all the way to Sao Paulo, some 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles) away, and triggered a global outcry over images of one of Earth’s most vital resources burning.

There is no indication that Monday’s fires were coordinated, said Alberto Setzer, head of INPE’s fire monitoring program.

Rather, they appear to fit a pattern of increasing deforestation and burning, he said.

Experts say Amazon fires are caused mainly by illegal farmers, ranchers and speculators clearing land and torching the trees.

In Brazil, the so-called “arc of deforestation” has been advancing.

“The regions where the most fires are occurring are moving farther and farther north,” Setzer told AFP.

“The ‘arc of deforestation’ is undoubtedly evolving.”

August is typically when fire season starts in earnest in the Amazon, with the arrival of drier weather.

This has been a worrying year so far for the forest, a key buffer against global warming: INPE detected 5,373 fires last month, up eight percent from July last year.

And with 24,124 fires so far this month, it is on track to be the worst August under President Jair Bolsonaro — though well below the 63,764 fires detected in August 2005, the worse for the month since records began in 1998.

Bolsonaro, an agribusiness ally, faces international criticism for a surge in Amazon destruction on his watch. Since he took office in January 2019, average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has increased by 75 percent compared to the previous decade.

The far-right president rejects that criticism.

“None of those who are attacking us have the right. If they wanted a pretty forest to call their own, they should have preserved the ones in their countries,” he wrote on Twitter Thursday.

“The Amazon belongs to Brazilians, and always will.”

But with Bolsonaro running for reelection in October, the destruction risks accelerating, said Ane Alencar, director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM).

“We know from previous years that there is a link between elections and deforestation,” with officials and enforcement agencies distracted by the campaign, she said.

This year, “we have high rates of deforestation… and there are still lots of felled trees waiting to burn.”

SERIOUSLY?!

Finns urged to take fewer saunas amid energy crunch


By AFP
Published August 26, 2022

With an estimated three million saunas for 5.5 million people, the steam bath is a traditional Finnish institution - Copyright AFP/File Daniel ROLAND

Finns are being urged to turn down their thermostats this winter, take shorter showers and spend less time in their beloved saunas, as Europe faces an energy crunch following Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The nationwide power saving campaign was announced this week Russia has cut gas supplies to Finland and other European countries in recent months, causing energy prices to soar.

Called “A degree lower”, the campaign will be launched on October 10, Kati Laakso, a spokeswoman at state-owned company Motiva which promotes sustainability, told AFP on Friday.

The company is behind the campaign together with the Finnish government and energy authority.

In addition to lowering their heating and taking shorter showers, Finns will be encouraged to cut back on sauna time.

With an estimated three million saunas for 5.5 million people, the steam bath is a traditional Finnish institution. Bathers gather together in the nude in temperatures of around 85 degrees Celsius (185F).

With energy prices soaring, the campaign will also urge Finns to spend less time on entertainment electronics, turn off garage heating and save on petrol by driving slower.

“These are just some options. We hope that people will voluntarily follow the recommendations and understand the situation, that we are heading into a difficult winter,” Laakso said.

“Maybe people don’t need to turn on the sauna everyday. Maybe just once a week”, she added.

This is the first time an energy saving campaign has been introduced in Finland since the 1970s oil crisis.

In May, Russian energy giant Gazprom halted supplies to neighbouring Finland after Helsinki refused to pay its bill in rubles, which Moscow had demanded in a bid to side-step financial sanctions and force European energy clients to prop up its central bank.

In 2021, Gazprom supplied about two thirds of the country’s gas consumption but only eight percent of its total energy use.

Gasum, Finland’s state-owned energy company, said it would use other sources, such as the Balticconnector pipeline, which links Finland to fellow EU member Estonia.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M; GNOMES OF ZURICH
Diamond magnate appeals Swiss corruption verdict


By AFP
Published August 27, 2022

Steinmetz, previously sentenced to five years behind bars for corruption linked to mining rights deals in Guinea, insists he is the victim of a "big injustice" -

 Copyright AFP/File Christophe ARCHAMBAULT

Nina LARSON

French-Israeli diamond magnate Beny Steinmetz will be back in court in Switzerland on Monday to appeal against a corruption sentence linked to mining rights in Guinea.

A Geneva court convicted the 66-year-old businessman in January 2021 of setting up a complex financial web to pay bribes to ensure his company could obtain permits in an area estimated to contain the world’s biggest untapped deposits of iron ore.

He was sentenced to five years in prison and also ordered to pay 50 million Swiss francs ($52 million) in compensation to the canton of Geneva.

Steinmetz maintained his innocence throughout that trial and immediately appealed against the ruling, decrying it as a “big injustice”.

Two of his alleged co-conspirators, who were slapped with shorter jail terms, are also appealing.

Steinmetz has changed his legal and communications team for the appeal, and they are preparing to argue that the lower court had not fully heard his arguments and had misunderstood the situation.

The first trial had painted Steinmetz in a way that “does not at all correspond to reality,” his spokesman Marc Comina said in a document detailing the diamond magnate’s case.

Far from being corrupt, Beny Steinmetz Group Resources (BSGR) had legitimately obtained the mining rights in question, and had striven in difficult and complex circumstances to set up an operation that would have benefited Guinea’s national interests, the document said.

– ‘Pact of corruption’ –

Swiss prosecutors painted a far different picture during the first trial, which was the culmination of a drawn-out international investigation that kicked off in Switzerland in 2013.

They accused Steinmetz and two partners of bribing a wife of the then Guinean president Lansana Conte and others in order to win mining rights in the southeastern Simandou region.

The prosecutors said Steinmetz obtained the rights shortly before Conte died in 2008 after about $10 million was paid in bribes over a number of years, some through Swiss bank accounts.

Conte’s military dictatorship ordered global mining giant Rio Tinto to relinquish two concessions to BSGR for around $170 million in 2008.

Just 18 months later, BSGR sold 51 percent of its stake in the concession to Brazilian mining giant Vale for $2.5 billion.

But in 2013, Guinea’s first democratically-elected president Alpha Conde launched a review of permits allotted under Conte and later stripped the VBG consortium formed by BSGR and Vale, of its permit.

To secure the initial deal, prosecutors claimed Steinmetz and representatives in Guinea entered a “pact of corruption” with Conte and his fourth wife Mamadie Toure.

Toure, who has admitted to having received payments, has protected status in the United States as a state witness.

She and a number of other key witnesses in the case failed to appear in the first trial, and it remained unclear if they would attend the appeal.

– ‘Totally false’ –

Steinmetz, who lived in Geneva during the years when the bribes were allegedly paid, continues to maintain that the bribery allegations are “totally false”, according to the document released by his team.

It insisted that Rio Tinto had lost the rights to half of its concessions in Simandou over its failure to develop them, in accordance with Guinean mining laws, and that BSGR later legitimately bid for and obtained the rights.

There was “nothing illegal or arbitrary” about that decision, the document said.

It also argued that the lower court had misunderstood the nature of the deal with Vale, and that BSGR had wanted to create a lasting partnership and business in Guinea.

“BSGR never intended to leave Guinea once the partnership with Vale was signed,” it said.

“Had it not been driven out of the country, BSGR would still be operating in Guinea today and would be a major player in the country’s economic rise.”

Steinmetz, who was granted a legal free-passage guarantee in order to participate in the first trial, left Switzerland without serving his sentence.

He will be back in the Geneva court from Monday to argue his case after receiving another free-passage, with the appeal hearing due to last through September 7. The verdict will come at a later date.

In Poland, Where Coal is King, Homeowners Queue for Days to Buy Fuel

August 27, 2022 
Reuters

Truck drivers rest in the shade in front of the Bogdanka coal mine 

while they wait for coal to be loaded, in Bogdanka, Poland, Aug. 26, 2022.

WARSAW/BOGDANKA, POLAND —

In Poland's late summer heat, dozens of cars and trucks line up at the Lubelski Wegiel Bogdanka coal mine, as people fearful of winter shortages wait for days to stock up on heating fuel in queues reminiscent of communist times.

Artur, 57, a pensioner, drove up from Swidnik, some 30 kilometers from the mine in eastern Poland on Tuesday, hoping to buy several tons of coal for himself and his family.

"Toilets were put up today, but there's no running water," he said, after three nights of sleeping in his small red hatchback in a crawling queue of trucks, tractors towing trailers and private cars.

"This is beyond imagination; people are sleeping in their cars. I remember the communist times, but it didn't cross my mind that we could return to something even worse."

Artur's household is one of the 3.8 million in Poland that rely on coal for heating and now face shortages and price hikes, after Poland and the European Union imposed an embargo on Russian coal following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in February.

Poland banned purchases with an immediate effect in April, while the bloc mandated fading them out by August.

While Poland produces over 50 million tons from its own mines every year, imported coal, much of it from Russia, is a household staple because of competitive prices and the fact that Russian coal is sold in lumps more suitable for home use.

Soaring demand has forced Bogdanka and other state-controlled mines to ration sales or offer the fuel to individual buyers via online platforms, in limited amounts. Artur, who did not want to give his full name, said he had collected paperwork from his extended family in the hope of picking up all their fuel allocations at once.

The mine planned to sell fuel for some 250 households Friday and would continue sales over the weekend to cut waiting times, Dorota Choma, a representative for the Bogdanka mine told Reuters.

The limits are in place to prevent hoarding and profiteering, or even selling spots in the queue, Choma said.

Cars and trucks queue for more than a kilometer to pick up coal in front of the Bogdanka mine in Bogdanka, Poland, Aug. 26, 2022.

Like all Polish coal mines, Bogdanka typically sells most of the coal it produces to power plants. Last year, it sold less than 1% of its output to individual clients so it lacks the logistics to sell fuel directly to retail buyers.

Lukasz Horbacz, head of the Polish Coal Merchant Chamber of Commerce, said the decline in Russian imports began in January when Moscow started using rail tracks for military transport.

"But the main reason for the shortages is the embargo that went into immediate effect. It turned the market upside down," he told Reuters.

A spokesperson for the Weglokoks, a state-owned coal trader tasked by the government to boost imports from other countries declined to comment, while the climate ministry was not available for comment. Government officials have repeatedly said Poland would have enough fuel to meet demand.

In recent years, Poland has been the most vocal critic of EU climate policy and a staunch defender of coal that generates as much as 80% of its electricity. But coal output has steadily declined as the cost of mining at deeper levels increases.

Coal consumption has held mostly steady, prompting a gradual rise in imports. In 2021, Poland imported 12 million tons of coal, of which 8 million tons came from Russia and were used by households and small heating plants.

In July, Poland ordered two state-controlled companies to import several million tons of the fuel from other sources including Indonesia, Colombia and Africa, and introduced subsidies for homeowners facing a doubling or tripling of coal prices from last winter.

"As much as 60% of those that use coal for heating may be affected by energy poverty," Horbacz said.

Back at Bogdanka, Piotr Maciejewski, 61, a local farmer who joined the queue Tuesday, said he was prepared for a long wait.

"My tractor stays in line, I'm going home to get some sleep," he said.

Poland faces a winter of discontent as energy poverty looms

AFP
Published August 27, 2022

Poland uses 10 million tons of coal annually to heat households – a whopping 87 percent of all coal used in EU households in 2019.

According to an independent think tank, Warsaw-based Forum Energii, about half of this is extracted domestically, while Russia used to make up about 40 percent, or 3.9 million tons a year.

However, Poland and the European Union imposed an embargo on Russian coal following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February. That means about 3.8 million homes in Poland that rely on coal for heating in the winter are now facing shortages and price hikes.

Reuters reports that even now, in Poland’s late summer heat, dozens of cars and trucks line up at the Lubelski Wegiel Bogdanka coal mine, as householders fearful of winter shortages wait for days and nights to stock up on heating fuel in queues reminiscent of communist times.

Artur, 57, a pensioner, drove up from Swidnik, some 30 km (18 miles) from the mine in eastern Poland on Tuesday, hoping to buy several tonnes of coal for himself and his family.

“Toilets were put up today, but there’s no running water,” he said, after three nights of sleeping in his small red hatchback in a crawling queue of trucks, tractors towing trailers, and private cars.

“This is beyond imagination, people are sleeping in their cars. I remember the communist times but it didn’t cross my mind that we could return to something even worse.”

Energy discontent and coal shortages

It may seem hard to believe that in coal-rich Poland, some 3 million households are facing a winter of energy discontent as the coal shortage grows and prices soar.

But there is a very good explanation for what is happening in Poland. It began back when Poland reluctantly agreed to phase out coal in order to meet the EU’s carbon emissions targets. In November 2021, Poland also made a pledge to the COP26 Climate Conference in Glasgow to exit coal and stop building or investing in new capacity, according to Deutsche Welle.

Polish coal is expensive to mine because it is buried so deep, this making Russian coal much more affordable, and it is sold in lumps more suitable for home use.

Aleksandra Gawlikowska-Fyk of Forum Energii said Russian coal is also used by heating plants in the eastern part of Poland where it cannot be simply swapped for Polish coal. Russian coal is of higher quality containing less sulfur, she told DW.

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/poland-faces-a-winter-of-discontent-as-energy-poverty-looms/article#ixzz7dFeex4B1