PBS News: December 25 – 30, 2019, Mysterious death of White Helmets co-founder spotlights toxic propaganda, China: Power and Prosperity — Watch the full documentary
WIRED UK:
Shenzhen – The Silicon Valley of Hardware (Full Documentary)
Scientific American: A Russian Ice Cap Is
Collapsing–It Could Be a Warning
NASA’s Giant Leaps, Past and Future:
Saluting Apollo Heroes and Looking Forward to Artemis Missions, SpaceX #CrewDragon Demonstration Flight Return to
Earth
Monday on the NewsHour, weekend
attacks on Jewish and Christian congregations send shockwaves nationwide,
reiterating fears of violence toward religious groups. Plus: The fallout from
U.S. airstrikes on an Iran-backed militia group in Iraq, 2020 Democrats
campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire, Politics Monday with Susan Page and
Domenico Montanaro and our Now Read This book club for December. Stream your
PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG
Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
PBS NewsHour Weekend full episode December 29, 2019
On this edition for Sunday, December
2019, a suspect was arraigned in the stabbing attack that injured five people
during a Hanukkah celebration at a rabbi’s home in New York. Also, NewsHour
Weekend producers and reporters discuss some of their biggest stories in 2019.
Karina Mitchell anchors from New York. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS
app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
PBS NewsHour Weekend full episode December 28, 2019
On this edition for Saturday,
December 28, a truck bombing in Mogadishu, Somalia, killed at least 78 people
and injured more than 120 others, and how winter storms across the southeast
and plains are affecting travel this holiday weekend. Also, NewsHour Weekend
producers and reporters reflect on some of their favorite stories from 2019.
Karina Mitchell anchors from New York. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS
app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Friday on the NewsHour, how Iran is
responding to internal pressure from mass protests and external pressure from
U.S. sanctions. Plus: What the outcry over a new Indian citizenship law says
about the country’s secular values, Mark Shields and David Brooks review the
politics of 2019 and preview 2020 and a new film imagines the interactions
between Popes Benedict and Francis. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app:
https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Wednesday on the NewsHour, as the
year concludes, we examine what it told us about the problem of climate change
— and how to address it. Plus: How foreign policy has evolved over the past
decade, repairing Notre Dame Cathedral after a devastating fire, late night TV
with Lilly Singh, a conversation with “The Other Americans” author
Laila Lalami and military musicians sing “Carol of the Bells.” Stream your PBS
favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
A
month after the suspicious death of White Helmets co-founder James Le Mesurier
in Turkey, British officials are being urged to conduct a thorough investigation
of the incident. Friends and colleagues fear Le Mesurier may have been murdered
or driven to suicide by a relentless campaign of character assassination.
Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports on how propaganda maligned him.
Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe
to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
After being diagnosed with a rare
genetic condition that deteriorates muscle, Cara E. Yar Khan was told she’d have
to limit her career ambitions and dial down her dreams. She ignored that advice
and instead continued to pursue her biggest ambitions. In this powerful, moving
talk, she shares her philosophy for working on the projects that matter to her
most — while letting courage and fear coexist. Watch for heart-stopping,
vertigo-inducing footage of a trip that shows her living her theory to the
full.
This talk was presented at an
official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
Breast milk grows babies’ bodies,
fuels neurodevelopment, provides essential immunofactors and safeguards against
famine and disease — why, then, does science know more about tomatoes than
mother’s milk? Katie Hinde shares insights into this complex, life-giving
substance and discusses the major gaps scientific research still needs to fill
so we can better understand it.
This talk was presented at an
official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
All mammals share certain characteristics,
like warm blood and backbones. But despite their similarities, these creatures
also have many biological differences — and one of the most remarkable
differences is how they give birth. Kate Slabosky details the placental,
marsupial, and monotreme methods of giving birth. [Directed by Compote
Collective, narrated by Julianna Zarzycki, music by Big Banda Soundscapers].
Meet the educator
Kate Slabosky · Educator
About TED-Ed
TED-Ed Original lessons feature the
words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators.
TED-Ed | April 2017
Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware (Full
Documentary) | Future Cities | WIRED
Future Cities, a full-length
documentary strand from WIRED Video, takes us inside the bustling Chinese city
of Shenzhen. Subscribe to WIRED?? https://po.st/SubscribeWired We examine the unique manufacturing ecosystem that has
emerged, gaining access to the world’s leading hardware-prototyping culture
whilst challenging misconceptions from the west. The film looks at how the
evolution of “Shanzhai” – or copycat manufacturing – has transformed traditional
models of business, distribution and innovation, and asks what the rest of the
world can learn from this so-called “Silicon Valley of hardware”. ABOUT
FUTURE CITIES Future Cities is part of a new flagship documentary strand from
WIRED Video that explores the technologies, trends and ideas that are changing
our world. Subscribe to the WIRED YouTube channel to ensure you never miss an
episode. HOLY LAND: STARTUP NATIONS (SERIES 2) Premiering in February, the
second season of WIRED’s Future Cities series takes us inside one of the
world’s biggest startup nations. With the most tech startups and venture
capital per capita in the world, Israel has long been hailed as The Startup
Nation. WIRED’s four-part series will look beyond Tel Aviv’s vibrant, liberal
tech epicentre to the wider Holy Land region – the Palestinian territories,
where a parallel Startup Nation story is emerging in East Jerusalem, Ramallah
and the West Bank, as well as in the Israeli cybersecurity hub of Beersheba.
And we will learn how the fertile innovation ecosystem of Silicon Wadi has
evolved as a result of its unique political, geographical and cultural
situation and explore the future challenges – and solutions – these nations are
facing. CONNECT WITH WIRED Web: https://po.st/WiredVideo Twitter: https://po.st/TwitterWired Facebook: https://po.st/FacebookWired Google+: https://po.st/GoogleWired Instagram: https://po.st/InstagramWired Magazine: https://po.st/MagazineWired Newsletter: https://po.st/NewslettersWired ABOUT WIRED WIRED brings you the future as it happens – the
people, the trends, the big ideas that will change our lives. An award-winning
printed monthly and online publication. WIRED is an agenda-setting magazine
offering brain food on a wide range of topics, from science, technology and
business to pop-culture and politics.
High in the Russian Arctic, in the
chilly waters straddling the Kara and Laptev, an 84-billion-ton island ice cap
is projectile vomiting into the sea. Scientists say it could hold useful clues
about what to expect as the world continues to warm.
The Vavilov Ice Cap, nestled in Russia’s Severnaya Zemlya archipelago, suddenly
started to surge forward in 2013. This is not an uncommon event for glaciers —
every so often, pressure will build up behind the ice and cause it to
temporarily slip forward. These surge events can last anywhere from a few
months to a year or more, and they’ll typically stabilize on their own.
But in 2015 — two years after the surge started — the Vavilov Ice Cap was still
going. By then, it was moving faster than ever, flowing forward at a rate of
about 26 meters per day and dumping 4.5 billion tons of ice into the sea over
the course of a single year.
In total, Vavilov has lost about 9.5 billion tons of ice in the last six years.
Scientists monitoring the ice cap’s progress say it’s moved beyond a simple
glacial surge. The rush of ice seems to have transitioned into a phenomenon
known as an “ice stream,” a long-lasting, fast-moving flow of ice out
of the glacier and into the surrounding landscape — or, in this case, the sea.
Scientists know ice streams exist in frozen places around the world, including
the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. But according to a new paper
describing the events at Vavilov, this is the first time researchers have
documented an ice stream’s formation from the very beginning.
Now that they’ve seen how it happens, the researchers say their observations
may hold clues about the future of the world’s glaciers as global temperatures
rise.
“Now we know these ice caps could be more unstable” than previously
believed, said lead study author Whyjay Zheng, a doctoral student at Cornell
University. “We may possibly have to revise our future sea-level rise,
considering this.”
Even when they appear to be stationary, glaciers are typically flowing forward
— just so slowly it’s barely noticeable. There’s a reason for the phrase
“moving at a glacial pace.” Until 2013, Vavilov Ice Cap was likely
inching forward at an imperceptible rate.
The researchers believe the ice first began to surge when it pushed past a
mound of sediment on the landscape that had previously served as a barrier
holding it back. When this happened, it slid onto a smoother patch of bedrock
and slipped forward.
“You used to have a gate that constrained the ice, and then you lose this
gate,” Zheng said. “So all of this ice at a higher place just
collapsed down into the ocean.”
Over time, as the movement of the
ice accelerated, the scientists began to observe physical features that
suggested the flow had morphed into an ice stream. Rifts and crevasses began to
appear on the landscape around the moving ice, which showed up as dark stripes
on satellite images. These cracks are typical features of ice streams.
While warming didn’t necessarily cause the initial surge, the researchers
believe rising temperatures may be partly influencing the flow of ice, now that
it’s on the move. During hotter summers — including unusually warm years in
2015 and 2018 — the researchers observed that the ice tended to flow even
faster, slowing down again when the temperatures cool.
The scientists haven’t proved the temperatures are causing the faster ice flow,
but they suspect there’s a connection. If so, it could mean even faster losses
at Vavilov Ice Cap as the region warms.
Perhaps more importantly, the ice cap’s behavior has given scientists useful
insight into the factors that cause ice streams to form in the first place. In
Vavilov’s case, a shift in the bedrock beneath the ice seems to have been a key
component. Afterward, faster ice flow seems to have helped the initial surge
transform into a long-lasting, possibly permanent ice stream.
Scientists believe the much larger Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets may be
vulnerable to these kinds of processes as temperatures rise.
Ocean-facing glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica are often stabilized by thick
ledges of ice, or ice shelves, jutting out into the sea. A theory known as
“marine ice sheet instability” suggests that as ice shelves melt and
weaken, glaciers may begin to slip backward along the bedrock beneath them,
pouring ice into the ocean at faster speeds. Eventually, they may give way to
unstoppable losses, which may empty entire glaciers into the sea.
While Vavilov is a comparatively tiny patch of ice, it’s demonstrated similar
processes in action, the researchers say. A stabilizing barrier broke down and
allowed the ice to surge forward. The ice never stabilized, and it’s now become
a fast-flowing ice stream.
What this means for the future of the Vavilov Ice Cap remains uncertain. It’s
still too early to tell whether the stream will slow down again — or, in a
worst case scenario, eventually drain the ice cap from the face of the island.
“One thing we have to do is to continue to monitor this place,” Zheng
said. “Maybe for 10 more years or so.”
Reprinted from ClimateWire with permission from E&E News. E&E
provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net.
As China has risen in prosperity,
influence and military strength, what are the social, economic and political
forces at play? Come along with PBS NewsHour as we travel around the globe to
explore the emerging superpower and its relationship with the United States.
“China: Power and Prosperity” covers the country’s powerful leader,
his signature foreign policy, U.S.-China trade and technology wars, how Chinese
technology helps stifle dissent, and more. A collaboration with the Pulitzer
Center on Crisis Reporting, PBS NewsHour conducted more than 70 on-camera interviews
in eight Chinese cities and across eight countries. Stream your PBS favorites
with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
NASA’s Giant Leaps, Past and Future: Saluting Apollo
Heroes and Looking Forward to Artemis Missions,
Fifty years ago, humans took their
first steps on the Moon and the world watched as we made history. On July 19,
2019, we broadcast this live salute to our #Apollo50th
heroes and looked forward to our next giant leap for future #Artemis
missions to the Moon and Mars.
Join us starting at 7:30 a.m. EST to
see SpaceX’s #CrewDragon
on its journey back to Earth, including its deorbit burn and splashdown in the
Atlantic Ocean.
Photographer Steve Axford (previously) continues his quest to document some
of the world’s most obscure fungi found in locations around Australia. Axford
lives and works in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales in Australia
where he often has to travel no further than his own back yard to make some of
the discoveries you see here. The forms of fungi, slime molds, and lichens he
prefers to document seem to have no limit in their diverse characteristics.
Axford explained when we first featured his work last year that he suspects many of the tropical
species he stumbles onto are often completely undocumented. You can follow more
of Axford’s discoveries on Flickr and SmugMug.
Mushrooms, Mycology of Consciousness – Paul Stamets,
EcoFarm Conference Keynote 2017
EcoFarm Conference
“Mycodiversity is our biosecurity. Let’s celebrate decomposition. Let’s
let it rot.” Paul Stamets, speaker, author, mycologist, medical researcher
and entrepreneur, is considered an intellectual and industry leader in fungi
habitat, medicinal use, and production. He lectures extensively to deepen your
understanding and respect for the organisms that literally exist under every
footstep you take on this path of life. His presentations cover a range of
mushroom species and research showing how mushrooms can help the health of
people and planet. His central premise is that habitats have immune systems,
just like people, and mushrooms are cellular bridges between the two. Our close
evolutionary relationship to fungi can be the basis for novel pairings in the
microbiome that lead to greater sustainability and immune enhancement.
www.eco-farm.org
Minneapolis-based
artist Alex Kuno imagines a world of twisted organic
beings that borrow elements of plant life, anatomy, and the natural world. The
artist admits that his illustrations are likely to creep some people out, but
purposefully includes ideas that highlight life and growth, creating a
dichotomy of revulsion and delight as the viewer carefully untangles each
artwork. The mixed-media drawings are made primarily using ink, watercolor,
graphite and chalk. You can see more of Kuno’s artwork on Instagram and limited edition prints are
available in his shop.
(via Booooooom)
“Offerings” (2019), Pen, watercolor,
ink, gel pen and colored pencil on paper. 26.75 x 42.5 inches
Sinuous, intertwined
wildlife bridge worlds of the living and the dead in Lauren Marx’s intricate multi- media work. Twisting fox heads,
disemboweled deer, and lambs bursting with flowers and birds are rendered with
watercolor, ink, pen, and colored pencil. Marx often places her animal
compositions on semi-abstract backgrounds, awash with grey tones that give a
sense of weightlessness to the dense drawings by evoking fog or clouds.
The artist, who resides in her
hometown of Saint Louis, Missouri, cites frequent trips to the Saint Louis Zoo,
biology classes, and National Geographic television shows as cultivating her
lifelong interest in animals. Her latest body of work debuts December 14, 2019,
at Corey Helford Gallery. The show, titled Chimera, is an evolution from her
previous pieces, combining multiple animals into each artwork to combine their
symbolic meanings.
“From Our Flesh” diptych (2015),
Pen, ink, colored pencil, graphite, and gel pen, 17.75 x 10 inches
“Chimera further explores my
concepts of fauna representations of emotions, personal mental health, family,
and self,” Marx shares in a statement. “I am creating a mythological world,
centered around North American flora and fauna, to better expresses my image of
who I am, how I am perceived, my struggles with mental health, and to explore
self-healing.”
Marx studied Fine Art at Webster
University and draws inspiration from zoology, mythology, scientific
illustration, and Northern Renaissance themes. The artist shares with Colossal
that in 2020 she wants to continue to challenge herself technically and
conceptually, and that works in the Chimera show brought her practice to
new levels in terms of scale and complexity.
See Chimera through January 18, 2020, at Corey Helford Gallery in Los
Angeles, and explore more of Marx’s intricate illustrative artwork on Instagram.
The artist also offers prints and stickers on Etsy.
“Honey” (2019) Pen, watercolor, ink
gel pen, gouache and colored pencil on mixed media paper, 31 x 37.25 inches
“Self-inflicted” (2016), Pen, ink,
graphite, colored pencil, and gel pen on paper, 20 x 20 inches
“Nested Fawn” (2019), Pen,
watercolor, ink, gel pen, gouache, and colored pencil on mixed media paper,
25.75 x 40 inches
“The First” (2016), Pen, ink,
graphite, colored pencil, and gel pen on paper, 20 x 24 inches
“Snake-Bird” (2019), Pen,
watercolor, ink, gel pen and colored pencil on mixed media paper 20 x 38 inches
“The Second” (2016), Pen, ink,
graphite, colored pencil, gel pen, and acrylic on paper, 20 x 24 inches
“Lovely” (2018), Pen, watercolor,
ink, colored pencil, gel pen, and graphite on paper, 17.5 x 22 inches
Tuesday on the NewsHour, thousands
of Syrian civilians are caught in the crossfire as forces loyal to the Assad
regime advance on Idlib province. Plus: British officials investigate the
mysterious death of White Helmets co-founder James Le Mesurier, how President
Trump is rolling back energy-efficiency standards for household goods, the
decade in entertainment and a festive song from U.S. troops. Stream your PBS
favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG
Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
On this edition for Sunday, December
22, both parties weigh in on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to delay
submitting articles of impeachment to the Senate, and Democratic outsiders
Andrew Yang and Tom Steyer discuss their campaign promises. Also, new details
emerge on the freezing of aid to Ukraine. Yamiche Alcindor anchors from New
York. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
PBS NewsHour Weekend full episode December 21, 2019
On this edition for Saturday,
December 21, the historic impeachment of Donald Trump, a government shutdown is
averted, and Democratic presidential candidates Julian Castro and Deval Patrick
join NewsHour Weekend from the campaign trail to discuss the 2020 race. Also,
nationwide protests against a controversial citizenship law grip India. Yamiche
Alcindor anchors from New York. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Nothing about our brains is set in
stone. Our brains are surprisingly dynamic. It can adapt, heal, renew or rewire
itself.
What you do or don’t do daily is
literally changing your brain for better or worse. But it’s not too late
rejuvenate, remodel, and reshape your brain to stay in peak condition.
Experiments in neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to change in
response to experience) have proven that the brain is capable of modifying
itself, either by changing its structure, increasing and reducing its size or
altering its biochemistry.
Can you physically change your brain
at any age? The answer is: yes, within limits. You can start with these
science-backed activities and habits.
1. Juggling improves the brain’s grey matter
Yes, the simple act of juggling has
recently been linked with better brain function. A new study reveals that learning to juggle may cause certain areas of your
brain to grow.
The study found that volunteers who
participated in a juggling exercise improved white matter in two areas of their
brains involved in visual and motor activity.
‘We have demonstrated that there are
changes in the white matter of the brain — the bundles of nerve fibres that
connect different parts of the brain — as a result of learning an entirely new
skill,’ explains Dr Heidi Johansen-Berg of the Department of Clinical
Neurology, University of Oxford, who led the work.
‘In fact, we find the structure of
the brain is ripe for change. We’ve shown that it is possible for the brain to
condition its own wiring system to operate more efficiently,’ she added.
Four weeks after the study, the
researchers found that new white matter in the jugglers’ brains had stayed put
and the amount of grey matter had even increased.
The researchers chose juggling as a
complex new skill for people to learn. Juggling is one of the many activities
you can choose to help your brain improve its grey matter.
2. Never go to bed without learning one new thing,
your brain will notice: stretch your brain muscles
It’s a Spanish saying. It’s profound
and so true.
Juggling is not the only activity
you can use to build white matter.
You can learn a variety of new
things that are unrelated to what you normally do. Variety is key.. meet new
people, learn a new skill, learn to dance, take up drawing, design, etc. Do
something every day that stretches you and makes you somewhat uncomfortable.
Norman Doidge, explains in his book,
“The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the
Frontiers of Brain Science”, “Not all activities are equal in this regard.
Those that involve genuine concentration — studying a musical instrument,
playing board games, reading, and dancing — are associated with a lower risk
for dementia. Dancing, which requires learning new moves, is both physically
and mentally challenging and requires much concentration.”
Learning a new language makes the
brain grow by increasing grey matter in the areas related to the use of
language, according to research. The study revealed that “The right hippocampus
and the left superior temporal gyrus were structurally more malleable in
interpreters acquiring higher proficiency in the foreign language.”
Leaning at least one new thing not
only improves your brain, but it also helps you focus by ignoring irrelevant
information.
Don’t do what you’ve always done.
3. Sleeping poorly is linked to rapid reductions in
brain volume
Many people don’t take good sleep
seriously. The bad news is that if you sleep poorly, your brain shrinks.
That was the surprising conclusion
reached by Claire E. Sexton, DPhil, Andreas B. Storsve, MSc, Kristine B.
Walhovd, PhD, Heidi Johansen-Berg, DPhil, and Anders M. Fjell, PhD in their
study to examine the relationship between sleep quality and cortical and
hippocampal volume.
The findings showed that having
trouble sleeping, or not getting enough sleep is linked to rapid reductions in
brain volume. The decline can affect important areas of the brain where
language, touch, balance and the ability to calculate mathematically or make
decisions reside.
“Studies have shown poor sleep can
cause protein buildup in the brain that attacks brain cells. So we’re still
trying to put the puzzle together,” says Dr Neal Maru, a neurologist and sleep specialist with
Integrated Sleep Services in Alexandria, Virginia, who is not associated with
the study.
Sleep repair and restore the brain.
Improving your sleep habits could be an important way to improve brain health.
7–8 hours/night of good sleep is essential for stimulating new connections and
brain growth.
4. Any form of exercise rewires the brain: keep your
body active
You already know that physical
activity is important for your better health. Exercise also helps your cerebral
quality that affects memory, motor skills, and the ability to learn.
In fact, just pedalling on a
stationary bike for 30 minutes can do wonders for your brain. In a study to
determine whether hippocampal volume would increase with exercise in humans,
the researchers discovered an increase in hippocampal size.
“Following exercise training,
relative hippocampal volume increased significantly in patients (12%) and
healthy subjects (16%), with no change in the nonexercise group of patients
(-1%),” they revealed.
Exercise the brain in many areas. It
increases your heart rate, which pumps more oxygen to the brain. It also helps
release body hormones, which provide a nourishing environment for the growth of
brain cells.
Indirectly, it also improves mood,
sleep and reduces stress and anxiety.
In another study, Dr Scott McGinnis, a neurologist at Brigham and Women’s
Hospital and an instructor in neurology at Harvard Medical School said, “Even
more exciting is the finding that engaging in a program of regular exercise of
moderate intensity over six months or a year is associated with an increase in
the volume of selected brain regions.”
Any form of aerobic exercise that
gets your heart pumping is a great start. Apart from hitting the gym, you can
also consider adding walking to your daily routine. Other moderate-intensity
exercises, such as swimming, stair climbing, tennis, or dancing can also help.
5. Mindfulness is becoming a global phenomenon for a
good reason
People have sworn by meditation for
millennia. It’s now supported by rigorous scientific research, driven in part
by a desire for new practices to improve our mental health.
The simple idea of being present
throughout your day, being more conscious of life as it happens, and noticing
any tension or preoccupations of the mind, without judging or analysing can
improve your mental health. It’s highly effective in combating stress.
Studies report that meditation can
“permanently rewire” your brain to raise levels of happiness. “In the past
decade, research has shown that the benefits of mindfulness include: stress
reduction, improved concentration, boosts to working memory, reduced
rumination, less emotional reactivity, more cognitive flexibility, a higher
level of relationship satisfaction, etc.” writes Christopher Bergland of Psychology Today.
Our brains are on auto-pilot most of
the time. Begin to notice the world around you. Awaken your senses to the world
around you.
You can upgrade our brain in many
different ways. Adopting better habits will not only increase your brain’s grey
matter, but it will also slow cognitive decline, speed up your memory recall
and improve your mental health.
Founder
at AllTopStartups | Author | Creator of Thinking in Models and Kaizen Habits |
Featured at Inc. Magazine, Business Insider, Forbes, Entrepreneur, etc.
At age 81, actor and activist Jane
Fonda is putting herself on the line for the planet — literally. In a video
interview with TEDWomen curator Pat Mitchell, Fonda speaks about getting
arrested multiple times during Fire Drill Fridays, the weekly climate
demonstrations she leads in Washington, DC — and discusses why civil
disobedience is becoming a new normal in the age of climate change.
This talk was presented at an
official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
Legendary duo Jane Fonda and Lily
Tomlin have been friends for decades. In a raw, tender and wide-ranging conversation
hosted by Pat Mitchell, the three discuss longevity, feminism, the differences
between male and female friendship, what it means to live well and women’s role
in future of our planet. “I don’t even know what I would do without my
women friends,” Fonda says. “I exist because I have my women
friends.”
This talk was presented at an
official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
In this passionate call to action,
16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg explains why, in August 2018, she
walked out of school and organized a strike to raise awareness of global
warming, protesting outside the Swedish parliament and grabbing the world’s
attention. “The climate crisis has already been solved. We already have
all the facts and solutions,” Thunberg says. “All we have to do is to
wake up and change.”
This talk was presented to a local
audience at TEDxStockholm, an independent event. TED’s editors chose to feature
it for you.
Wherever you are, no matter your
age, join me in my climate strike. Sit outside your parliament or local
government building every Friday until your country is on a safe pathway to
being well below the two-degree Celsius warming target.
TEDx was created in the spirit of
TED’s mission, “ideas worth spreading.” It supports independent organizers who
want to create a TED-like event in their own community.
Mimesis – Fecunditatis, 2014.
Chromogenic print. Format 180 x 180cm (70.9 x 70.9 in)
Mimesis is an ongoing photomontage project by
Paris-based photographer Seb Janiak that depicts the wings of insects as the petals of flowers.
Janiak is deeply interested in the mechanisms behind mimicry in nature, where an organism develops
appendages, textures, and colors that directly mirror its surroundings. This
process involves a strange interaction between different organisms he describes
as “a complex co-evolutionary mechanism involving three species: the model, the
imitator and the dupe.”
To create each artwork Janiak scours
antique stores and taxidermist shops to find examples of wings which he then
photographs at extremely high resolution. The pieces are digitally edited and
pieced together into flower-like forms (a sort of meta mimic of a mimic) which
are then output as chromogenic prints measuring nearly 6 feet square.
The Mimesis series,
which now comprises 22 pieces, was shown for the first time at the Photo Shanghai art fair
last September. The series also won an IPA Lucy award earlier
this year. All images courtesy the artist. (via My Modern Met)
Mimesis – Lubon Tranquillitatis,
2014. Chromogenic print. Format 180 x 180cm (70.9 x 70.9 in)
Mimesis – Lubhyati Solitudinis,
2014. Chromogenic print. Format 180 x 180cm (70.9 x 70.9 in)
Mimesis – Lacus Luxuriae, 2014.
Chromogenic print. Format 180 x 180cm (70.9 x 70.9 in)
Mimesis – Hibiscus Trinium, 2012.
Chromogenic print. Format 180 x 180cm (70.9 x 70.9 in)
Mimesis – Aphyllae Maleakht, 2014.
Chromogenic print. Format 180 x 180cm (70.9 x 70.9 in)
Mimesis – Precognitus Christium,
2014. Chromogenic print. Format 180 x 180cm (70.9 x 70.9 in)
Mimesis – Tradescantia Ganymedia,
2012. Chromogenic print. Format 180 x 180cm (70.9 x 70.9 in)
Mimesis – Precognitus Christium,
2014. Chromogenic print. Format 180 x 180cm (70.9 x 70.9 in)
Mimesis – Ornithogale Venusiaïs,
2012. Chromogenic print. Format 180 x 180cm (70.9 x 70.9 in)
Latvia-based graphic
artist and illustrator Alex Konahin (previously) recently completed work on a new series
of ornate insect drawings titled Little Wings. The illustrations were made using
pens and india ink in his distinctive style that makes used of ornate scrolls
and intricate floral designs. If this is the first time you’ve seen Konahin’s
work, be sure to check out his amazing Anatomy drawings, and you can also see lots
more on Facebook and Tumblr. (via Faith is Torment)
Graphic artist and
illustrator Alex Konahin (previously here
and here)
has just finished a new illustration-based project centered around the subject
of seriously detailed dogs. The Latvia-based artist is known for his highly decorative
style which he illustrates in each of his drawn subjects, a trait that is
exemplified in the ornate fur of the included animals.
Konahin’s series was inspired by no
inspiration at all, the works coming from a time when Konahin was going through
an intense creative block after a long break from his personal creative work.
Konahin’s first portrait in the series was of an English Bulldog, and after
liking the result, followed that piece up with a German Shepherd and Pit Bull
Terrier. You can see more of Konahin’s work on his Behance, Instagram,
and Facebook.
A new film considers
how mycelium and mushrooms have created an often-unseen network, similar to an
underground internet, that has connected all living beings for the last 3.5
billion years. Featuring conversations with food journalist Eugenia Bone,
mycologist Paul Stamets, and writer Michael Pollan, Fantastic Fungi: The Magic Beneath Us dives into how the diverse underground
web creates the soil necessary for plants and trees to root. “It’s amazing what
we don’t know about mushrooms. They really are a frontier of knowledge,” Pollan
says in the film.
Fantastic Fungi explores seven benefits of the organisms, including those
dealing with biodiversity, innovation, food, arts, and mental, physical, and
spiritual health. Screenings are scheduled worldwide through February 2020. Follow
updates on the film directed by Louie Schwartzberg and the broader fungi movement on Instagram.
(Thnx, Laura!)
Fantastic Fungi, Official Film Trailer | Moving Art by
Louie Schwartzberg
When so many are struggling for
connection, inspiration and hope, Fantastic Fungi brings us together as
interconnected creators of our world. Fantastic Fungi, directed by Louie
Schwartzberg, is a consciousness-shifting film that takes us on an immersive journey
through time and scale into the magical earth beneath our feet, an underground
network that can heal and save our planet. Through the eyes of renowned
scientists and mycologists like Paul Stamets, best-selling authors Michael
Pollan, Eugenia Bone, Andrew Weil and others, we become aware of the beauty,
intelligence and solutions the fungi kingdom offers us in response to some of
our most pressing medical, therapeutic, and environmental challenges. Official
Website: https://fantasticfungi.com Showtimes & Tickets: https://fantasticfungi.com/screenings Take Action: https://fantasticfungi.com/action Help Spread the Word: https://fantasticfungi.com/participate Saw the film? Leave a Review: https://fantasticfungi.com/reviews Join the Conversation Instagram: @fantasticfungi Facebook:
@FungiFilm Twitter: @FantasticFungi Saw the film? Tell us about it! Text
“FUNGI” to #38470 to record a video review now Take action now and get ready to
feel hope, resilience and connection. Mycelium is a life preserver not only for
our species but for so many species on this Earth that we love. We’re asking
you to start this revolution in the ecology of consciousness. Please help us.
We can save this planet with your help and the help of Mycelium. How can you
help? Watch the film. Grab as many people as you can and watch the film
together. Discuss the subject matter with each other. Tell others to do the
same. Follow the mycelium network’s guidance and example. Spread the word and
pass it forward. https://fantasticfungi.com
https://www.ted.com Mycologist Paul Stamets studies the mycelium — and lists 6
ways that this astonishing fungus can help save the world. TEDTalks is a daily
video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where
the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18
minutes. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover
these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed
captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available
on TED.com, at https://www.ted.com/translate. Follow us on Twitter https://www.twitter.com/tednews Checkout our Facebook page for TED exclusives https://www.facebook.com/TED
PBS News: December 16-19, 2019, Riace was once a beacon for immigrants, now it’s a
ghost town, Shields and Brooks on impeachment evidence, Pelosi’s powerful
moment, Shields and Brooks on articles of impeachment, FBI’s Russia mistakes, Americans
are drowning in medical debt, so this nonprofit is buying — and forgiving — it,
Are social media giants doing enough to prevent the spread of misinformation?, How
this nomadic music group is bridging cultural divides,
Dailymail:
Meet China’s ‘Basketball Girl’ – An incredible story of how a young woman who
lost her legs in a traffic accident fought against the odds to become champion
swimmer
Tuesday on the NewsHour, the House
Rules Committee considers procedures for Wednesday’s impeachment proceedings,
as President Trump unleashes outrage to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Plus: Rep.
Jason Crow on impeachment, the latest in Boeing’s 737 Max saga, the Sackler
family and opioids, refugees in Kentucky, how maternal stress can affect unborn
babies and children’s author Mo Willems. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS
app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
The southern Italian town of Riace
was once a beacon for immigrants from around the world, but three years after NewsHour
Weekend first reported on how it had welcomed immigrants, a political shift has
turned it into a relative ghost town. The change took place when a political
party known for its anti-immigration stance swept into power. Special
correspondent Christopher Livesay reports. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS
app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Syndicated columnist Mark Shields
and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the
week’s political news, including the House Judiciary Committee’s passage of
articles of impeachment along party lines, Republicans’ defense of President
Trump, how impeachment affects Trump politically, what the Horowitz report says
about the FBI and a bombshell report on the Afghan war. Stream your PBS
favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Social media has revolutionized the
way we connect and communicate — and certainly not all for the better. In his
new book, “Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of
the American Conversation,” Andrew Marantz explores how digital platforms full
of unforeseen vulnerabilities have been exploited by racists and vandals.
William Brangham sits down with Marantz to discuss. Stream your PBS favorites with
the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
How this nomadic music group is bridging cultural
divides
Tinariwen’s members are Tuaregs, an
ethnic group from all across the Sahara desert. They’re nomads who lay down
musical rather than physical roots, and their music follows a rich Tuareg
lyrical tradition — gone electric. But although the Tinariwen feel at home
wherever they are on stage, some of the communities in which they perform
extend hostility rather than hospitality. Ali Rogin reports. Stream your PBS
favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
The bacteria in our guts can break
down food the body can’t digest, produce important nutrients, regulate the
immune system, and protect against harmful germs. And while we can’t control
all the factors that go into maintaining a healthy gut microbiome, we can
manipulate the balance of our microbes by paying attention to what we eat.
Shilpa Ravella shares the best foods for a healthy gut. [Directed by Andrew
Foerster, narrated by Julianna Zarzycki].
Meet the educator
Shilpa Ravella · Educator
About TED-Ed
TED-Ed Original lessons feature the
words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators.
TED-Ed | March 2017
When it comes to what you bite, chew
and swallow, your choices have a direct and long-lasting effect on the most
powerful organ in your body: your brain. So which foods cause you to feel so
tired after lunch? Or so restless at night? Mia Nacamulli takes you into the
brain to find out. [Directed by Private Island, narrated by Addison Anderson].
Meet the educator
Mia Nacamulli · Educator
About TED-Ed
TED-Ed Original lessons feature the
words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators.
TED-Ed | June 2016
When you take a bite of a hot
pepper, your body reacts as if your mouth is on fire — because that’s
essentially what you’ve told your brain! Rose Eveleth details the science and
history behind spicy foods, giving insights into why some people continue to
pay the painful price for a little spice. [Directed by Flaming Medusa Studios
Inc., narrated by Rose Eveleth].
Meet the educator
Rose Eveleth · Educator
About TED-Ed
TED-Ed Original lessons feature the
words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators.
TED-Ed | March 2014
Before empires and royalty, before
pottery and writing, before metal tools and weapons – there was cheese. As
early as 8000 BCE, Neolithic farmers began a legacy of cheesemaking almost as
old as civilization. Today, the world produces roughly 22 billion kilograms of
cheese a year, shipped and consumed around the globe. Paul S. Kindstedt shares
the history of one of our oldest and most beloved foods. [Directed by Charlotte
Cambon, narrated by Addison Anderson, music by Jarrett Farkas].
Meet the educator
Paul Kindstedt · Educator
About TED-Ed
TED-Ed Original lessons feature the
words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators.
Meet China’s ‘Basketball Girl’: An incredible story of how a young woman who lost her legs
in a traffic accident fought against the odds to become champion swimmer
Qian Hongyan from Yunnan became the face of disability
in China in 2005
She lost both legs in 2000 aged just four and had to
walk with a basketball
With no future in education, she started swimming and
became a champion
Determined Qian has won a number of gold medals in
China in recent years
Her inspirational story made her a young role model for
China’s disabled
Published: 13:44 EST, 23 September
2015 | Updated: 02:47 EST, 24 September 2015
A young Chinese girl’s journey to
create a future for herself, despite losing both legs in a tragic accident, has
become the story that inspired thousands of disable people in China.
Qian Hongyan, from Yunnan, south west
China, made the headlines in 2005 when she was photographed ‘walking’ with the
help of a basketball.
Today, that same young woman is a
champion swimmer with Paralympic dreams. In 2009, the determined girl
became a national champion in the Chinese National Paralympics Swimming
Competition.
Last September, she won another gold
medal in the 100m breaststroke final in the Yunnan Provincial Paralympic Games.
Scroll down for video
Qian Hongyan from Yunnan, pictured
aged 10, lost her legs in 2000 after a car accident that nearly took her life
She became the face of disability
after a series of images captured her walking with a basketball support
Above, she is aged 16, at the
Yunzhinan Swimming Club where she trains daily in different swimming styles
At 11, the girl talks to a doctor at
China Rehabilitation Center in Beijing in 2007 after receiving her new legs
In 2013, Qian Hongyan, 18, prepares
for a new set of prosthesis at China Rehabilitation Centre in Beijing
Illustrator James R. Eads (previously) incorporates elements of Impressionism and fantasy in his colorful
landscapes. The Los Angeles-based artist builds imagined worlds with vibrant,
short brush strokes, often featuring exotic birds, half-sunken boats, and
swirling star-filled skies. Eads shares with Colossal that he is deeply
connected to music, which consistently influences his work. His personal
passion translates to client commissions, as he has created imagery for dozens
of bands ranging from The Black Keys and Leon Bridges to Jerry Garcia and Iggy
Pop.
“I’ve been really inspired by a lot
of different things lately, including many worlds theory—the idea of multiple
universes and timelines existing simultaneously,” Eads tells Colossal. “I’ve
been working on a series of pastel paintings called Many, Many Paths
that explores this idea through meandering paths in otherworldly gardens.” The
artist shares that his most recent undertaking is a series called Cosma
Visions, “which explores the idea of past lives and reincarnation reimagined on
the traditional tarot. It takes the reader through the journey of the soul in
the spirit plane after death.”
Eads also experiments with Virtual
Reality artwork, an example of which you can see below, and runs a
screen-printing studio in Los Angeles. He produces a range of limited edition
prints and other buyable items that incorporate his colorful illustrations. The
artist also recently successfully crowdfunded a Lenormand deck called Green Glyphs. Shop Eads’s online store and follow
along with new work on Instagram
and Facebook.
PBS News: December 10 – 15.2019, Dec 6,2019 – Shields and Brooks on
impeachment evidence, Pelosi’s powerful moment, and Why is a Nobel-winning
human rights activist defending Myanmar on Rohingya atrocities?
BBC Click:
A Vision of The World In 2040, Inside
Taiwan’s Tech Industry,
Pocket Worthy: Stronger Than Steel, Able to Stop a Speeding
Bullet
Nobel Women’s Initiative: Time to break the silence – Nobel Laureates to Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Women’s Initiative Statement on the persecution of Rohingya women, and Meet The Laureates
The Atlantic: Top 25 news photos
2019 – A wounded Syrian girl awaits rescue from under the rubble
next to the body of her sister (hands visible at right), who did not survive a
regime bombardment in Khan Sheikhun in the southern countryside of the
rebel-held Idlib province, on February 26, 2019. Five months after this photo,
the Syrian photographer who took it, Anas Al-Dyab, was killed in an air strike
in Khan Sheikhun. Al-Dyab was also a member of the “White Helmets,” a
group of volunteers carrying out search-and-rescue efforts in Syria.
On this edition for Sunday, December
15, the House prepares for a historic impeachment vote, how the decline of
local news is impacting civic engagement, a new documentary sheds light on
Border Patrol expansion, and the Italian town of Riace went from being a haven
for migrants to becoming a relative ghost town. Hari Sreenivasan anchors from
New York. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG
Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
On this edition for Saturday,
December 14, the House gets one step closer to impeaching President Trump, a
peace deal in Afghanistan faces new challenges, and how illusionist Derren
Brown is pushing the boundaries of mentalism. Hari Sreenivasan anchors from New
York. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Friday on the NewsHour, the House
Judiciary Committee passes two articles of impeachment against President Trump,
along party lines. Plus: What’s in the first phase of a U.S.-China trade deal,
Mark Shields and David Brooks on impeachment and other political news, the
Sahara’s nomadic musicians and a new book about how racists and vandals are
distorting the American conversation via social media. Stream your PBS
favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Thursday on the NewsHour, a
contentious House Judiciary Committee hearing over the case for impeaching
President Trump. Plus: A high-stakes election in the United Kingdom, how
Congress is looking to lower prescription drug costs, an unusual effort to
erase Americans’ medical debt, whether living near trees is better for our
health and a Brief But Spectacular take on getting happier with age. Stream
your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
A longer cut of Spencer Kelly’s
interview with film-maker Damon Gameau, whose film 2040 is a more positive take
on how our world might look in 20 years’ time. Subscribe HERE https://bit.ly/1uNQEWR Find us online at www.bbc.com/click Twitter: @bbcclick
Facebook: www.facebook.com/BBCClick
We head to Taiwan to find out what
‘Made in Taiwan’ really means in the 21st century; from healthcare artificial
intelligence to solving the pollution crisis. Subscribe HERE https://bit.ly/1uNQEWR Find us online at www.bbc.com/click Twitter: @bbcclick
Facebook: www.facebook.com/BBCClick
Abstract background like slice of wood timber natural. Tree ring.
New techniques for “densifying” wood
can turn the ubiquitous substance into a super-material suitable for
constructing buildings and body armor. Photo by mack2happy / Getty Images .
Some varieties of wood, such as oak
and maple, are renowned for their strength. But scientists say a simple and
inexpensive new process can transform any type of wood into a material stronger
than steel, and even some high-tech titanium alloys. Besides taking a star turn
in buildings and vehicles, the substance could even be used to make
bullet-resistant armor plates.
Wood is abundant and relatively
low-cost—it literally grows on trees. And although it has been used for
millennia to build everything from furniture to homes and larger structures,
untreated wood is rarely as strong as metals used in construction. Researchers
have long tried to enhance its strength, especially by compressing and
“densifying” it, says Liangbing Hu, a materials scientist at the University of
Maryland, College Park. But densified wood tends to weaken and spring back
toward its original size and shape, especially in humid conditions.
Now, Hu and his colleagues say they
have come up with a better way to densify wood, which they report
in Nature. Their simple, two-step process starts with boiling wood in a
solution of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and sodium sulfite (Na2SO3), a chemical
treatment similar to the first step in creating the wood pulp used to make
paper. This partially removes lignin and hemicellulose (natural polymers that
help stiffen a plant’s cell walls)—but it largely leaves the wood’s cellulose
(another natural polymer) intact, Hu says.
The second step is almost as simple
as the first: Compressing the treated wood until its cell walls collapse, then
maintaining that compression as it is gently heated. The pressure and heat
encourage the formation of chemical bonds between large numbers of hydrogen
atoms and neighboring atoms in adjacent nanofibers of cellulose, greatly
strengthening the material.
The results are impressive. The
team’s compressed wood is three times as dense as the untreated substance, Hu
says, adding that its resistance to being ripped apart is increased more than
10-fold. It also can become about 50 times more resistant to compression and
almost 20 times as stiff. The densified wood is also substantially harder, more
scratch-resistant and more impact-resistant. It can be molded into almost any
shape. Perhaps most importantly, the densified wood is also moisture-resistant:
In lab tests, compressed samples exposed to extreme humidity for more than five
days swelled less than 10 percent—and in subsequent tests, Hu says, a simple
coat of paint eliminated that swelling entirely.
A five-layer, plywoodlike sandwich
of densified wood stopped simulated bullets fired into the material—a result Hu
and his colleagues suggest could lead to low-cost armor. The material does not
protect quite as well as a Kevlar sheet of the same thickness—but it only costs
about 5 percent as much, he notes.
The team’s results “appear to open
the door to a new class of lightweight materials,” says Ping Liu, a materials
chemist at the University of California, San Diego, unaffiliated with the Nature
study. Vehicle manufacturers have often tried to save weight by switching from
regular steel to high-strength steel, aluminum alloys or carbon-fiber
composites—but those materials are costly, and consumers “rarely make that
money back in fuel savings,” Liu says. And densified wood has another leg up on
carbon-fiber composites: It does not require expensive adhesives that also can
make components difficult, if not impossible, to recycle.
Densified wood provides new design
possibilities and uses for which natural wood is too weak, says Peter Fratzl, a
materials scientist at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in
Germany who did not take part in the study. “Instead of creating a design for
the material at hand, researchers can create a material to suit the design they
want,” he says, alluding to a familiar process among aerospace engineers who
have a long history of developing ever-stronger alloys to meet their needs.
One possible obstacle to the
widespread use of densified wood will be engineers’ ability to scale up and
accelerate the process, Liu notes. Hu and his team spent several hours making
each coffee-table book–size slab of densified wood used for testing. But there
are no practical reasons the process could not be sped up or used to make
larger components, Hu contends.
Although Hu and his team have sought
to enhance wood’s strength, other researchers have pursued more unusual
goals—such as making it transparent. One team, led by materials scientist Lars
Berglund at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, has come up with
a way to make windowpanes of wood. The first step in that process (as in Hu’s)
is to remove lignin, a substance that not only stiffens wood but also creates
its brownish color. The researchers infuse the lignin-free wood with a polymer
called methyl methacrylate (MMA), a material better known by trade names such
as Plexiglas and Lucite.
Because MMA’s index of refraction (a
measure of how much it bends light) matches that of the lignin-free wood, rays
of light pass right through the MMA-infused composite instead of getting
bounced around inside empty cells. This renders the material remarkably clear.
Berglund and his team described their feat two years ago in Biomacromolecules. Coincidentally, at the same time Hu and his colleagues
were also developing a method
for rendering wood transparent.
Research like Hu’s and Berglund’s
can only add to the wild prospects for the future of materials science. Someday
soon it might be possible to live in a home made almost completely from one of
Earth’s most abundant and versatile building materials—from floors to rafters,
walls to windows. In the garage there may be a car whose chassis and bumpers
could be composed of densified wood rather than steel and plastic—knock on
wood.
Sid Perkins, who writes most often
about Earth and planetary sciences, materials science and paleontology, is
based in Crossville, Tenn.
E-cigarettes and vapes have exploded
in popularity in the last decade, especially among youth and young adults —
from 2011 to 2015, e-cigarette use among high school students in the US
increased by 900 percent. Biobehavioral scientist Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin
explains what you’re actually inhaling when you vape (hint: it’s definitely not
water vapor) and explores the disturbing marketing tactics being used to target
kids. “Our health, the health of our children and our future generations
is far too valuable to let it go up in smoke — or even in aerosol,” she
says.
This video was produced by TEDMED.
TED’s editors featured it among our daily selections on the home page.
Cigarettes aren’t good for us.
That’s hardly news — we’ve known about the dangers of smoking for decades. But
how exactly do cigarettes harm us, and can our bodies recover if we stop?
Krishna Sudhir details what happens when we smoke — and when we quit. [TED-Ed
Animation by TED-Ed].
Meet the educator
Krishna Sudhir · Educator
About TED-Ed
TED-Ed Original lessons feature the
words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators.
TED-Ed | September 2018
When you eat something loaded with
sugar, your taste buds, your gut and your brain all take notice. This
activation of your reward system is not unlike how bodies process addictive
substances such as alcohol or nicotine — an overload of sugar spikes dopamine
levels and leaves you craving more. Nicole Avena explains why sweets and treats
should be enjoyed in moderation. [Directed by STK Films, narrated by Michelle
Snow, music by Michael Dow].
Meet the educator
Nicole Avena · Educator
About TED-Ed
TED-Ed Original lessons feature the
words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators.
TED-Ed | January 2014
Nobel Peace laureate Jody Williams
brings tough love to the dream of world peace, with her razor-sharp take on
what “peace” really means, and a set of profound stories that zero in
on the creative struggle — and sacrifice — of those who work for it.
This talk was presented at an
official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
OPEN LETTER TO AUNG SAN SUU KYI:
STOP THE PERSECUTION OF ROHINGYAS
Dear State Counsellor and sister
Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,
In the years leading to your final
release in 2010, your struggle for democracy was ours. Your defiant activism
and unimaginable sacrifices profoundly inspired us, and like the rest of the
world, we held you as a beacon of hope for Burma and for our human family.
Along with other fellow laureates, we worked tirelessly and diligently for your
personal freedom.
It is thus with deep shock, sadness
and alarm that we witness your indifference to the cruelty inflicted upon the
Rohingya minority today. Nearly 270,000 people have sought refuge into
neighbouring Bangladesh these past two weeks, and a recent UN report
has highlighted an all too familiar story: extrajudicial executions; enforced
disappearance and arbitrary detention; rape, including gang rape, and other
forms of sexual violence. Arson attacks are being launched on civilians and
entire villages burnt, leading to what the UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights calls “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. This is an
assault on our humanity as a whole.
As Nobel Laureates working under the
banner of the Nobel Women’s Initiative, we have supported the groundbreaking work and courage of
women activists inside and along the borders of Burma for a decade. Their
tireless activism consistently highlights abuses committed by the Burmese
military. Just last November
the Women’s League of Burma denounced the ferocious militarism that plagues
Burma: “[…] we are gravely concerned for the security of women in conflict
areas. It is urgently needed for the government to end impunity for
state-sponsored sexual violence, and bring the military under civilian
control”.
As a fellow Nobel Laureate, a
worldwide icon for the universal freedom and human rights, and now State
Counsellor and de-facto Prime Minister of Burma, you have a personal and moral
responsibility to uphold and defend the rights of your citizens.
How many Rohingya have to die; how
many Rohingya women will be raped; how many communities will be razed
before you raise your voice in defense of those who have no voice? Your
silence is not in line with the vision of “democracy” for your country that you
outlined to us, and for which we all supported you over the years.
As women committed to peace, as your
sisters and fellow Laureates, we urge you to take a firm stand on this
unfolding crisis: recognize Rohingyas as citizens with full rights and take all
expedited measures possible to end the persecution of innocent civilians by the
Myanmar authorities.
In the words of fellow Laureate
Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “If the political price of your ascension to the
highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too
steep.” The time is now for you to stand for the rights of Rohingya people,
with the same vigour and conviction so many around the world stood for yours.
Sincerely,
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace
Laureate, (1976) – Northern Ireland
Jody Williams, Nobel Peace Laureate
(1997) – United States
Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Laureate
(2003) – Iran
Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Peace Laureate
(2011) – Liberia
Tawakkol Karman, Nobel Peace
Laureate (2011) – Yemen
International Day for the
Elimination of Racial Discrimination March 21, 2019 – Parliament Hill, Ottawa
In March 2018, Nobel Women’s
Initiative conducted a fact-finding delegation in partnership with Bangladeshi
organizations, and met with over 100 Rohingya women in two refugee camps, in
Kutapalong and Thyankhali. Sexual violence is one of the largest atrocities
committed in Myanmar, and we were able to witness, firsthand, how women are
systematically targeted by the Myanmar military.
The vast majority of women who
testified to the delegation were rape survivors. They provided first-hand
accounts of the high-levels of violence they endured. An alarming majority of
these women identified their perpetrators as members of the Myanmar Army. They
were raped openly, in broad daylight by men in military apparel, often in
public or just outside their home.
One of our partners Razia Sultana,
a lawyer and researcher with the Kaladan Press
—a Rohingya press network— has documented over 300 cases of women and girls raped in August 2017 alone. This
only represents a fraction of the total number raped at this time.
Women have been detained, tortured,
mutilated and killed in military camps, with the clear authorization of
camp commanders. Rape, as we know, is a common tool for genocide, and in
Myanmar the mutilation of women’s bodies, breasts and genitals was deliberately
aimed to destroy the very means of reproduction of the Rohingya.
In 2018, the UN Fact-Finding mission
on Myanmar, interviewed over 800 rape survivors and concluded
there was a ‘very clear chain of command’ within the Myanmar Army. It called
for the country’s military leaders to be investigated and prosecuted for
‘genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.’
The Myanmar Army’s latest atrocities
against the Rohingya are not new, and must not be seen in isolation.
Nobel Women’s Initiative has worked with multiple ethnic women’s groups in
Burma over the past ten years who have been documenting these patterns for
decades.
These latest atrocities are a
continuation of a decades-long policy to divide-and-rule, occupy and control
the ethnic territories, and seize their rich natural resources and land. In
fact, Myanmar has recently passed amendments to the VFV law, making it easier
for villagers’ lands to be confiscated.
To this date, the Myanmar Army
continues to harass and torture Rohingya villagers inside Rakhine State, and
continues to launch attacks and commit war crimes– including sexual violence,
in Northern and Eastern Myanmar, with impunity.
As the only country to have formally
recognized the Rohingya genocide, Canada is in a unique position to lead the
international community towards justice and meaningful support for Rohingya
women.
We call on the Canadian Government
to:
Increase humanitarian assistance to women refugee
survivors in Bangladesh through local women’s organizations who have been
responding to their needs, and are best equipped to continue doing so;
Stop ‘business as usual’ with Myanmar. Canada should
suspend all investments and direct aid, and redirect support to local
civil society and women’s groups who are the real agents of change;
Use all avenues available under international law to
bring both individual perpetrators of the Rohingya genocide, and the State
of Myanmar, to justice.
After three of her sister’s children
were killed during the violence between Catholics and Protestants in Northern
Ireland, Mairead Maguire organized massive demonstrations and other action
calling for a nonviolent end to the conflict. Along with Betty Williams, she is
the co-founder of Peace People, and together the two women won the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1976. She has spent her life since then to bearing witness to
oppression and standing in solidarity with people living in conflict, including
most in Syria.
Together, they co-founded the Peace People,
a movement committed to building a just and peaceful society in Northern
Ireland. They organized each week, for six months, peace rallies throughout
Ireland and the UK. These were attended by many thousands of people – mostly
women, and during this time there was a 70% decrease in the rate of violence.
Mairead currently serves as Honorary President.
Since receiving the award, Mairead
has dedicated her life to promoting peace, both in Northern Ireland and around
the world. Working with community groups throughout Northern Ireland, political
and church leaders, she has sought to promote dialogue, nonviolence and
equality between deeply divided communities.
A graduate from Irish School of
Ecumenics, Maguire works with inter-church and interfaith organizations and is
a councilor with the International Peace Council. She is a Patron of the
Methodist Theological College, and Northern Ireland Council for Integrated
Education. She is also the author of The Vision of Peace: Faith and Hope in
Northern Ireland.
“If we want to reap the harvest
of peace and justice in the future, we will have to sow the seeds of
nonviolence, here and now, in the present.”
Rigoberta Menchú Tum is a Mayan
k’iche’ activist born in 1959 in Chimel, a small Mayan community in the
highlands of Guatemala. As a young girl, Rigoberta traveled alongside her
father, Vincente Menchú, from community to community teaching rural campesinos their
rights and encouraging them to organize.
In 1960, ethnic and socioeconomic
tensions engrained since colonization spurred a brutal civil war against the
Mayan people. The military dictatorship, under the leadership of Efraín
Ríos Montt, and rich landowners initiated the bloodshed. By the time a
peace agreement was signed in 1996, 450 Mayan villages were destroyed, over
200,000 Guatemalans murdered and 1 million were displaced.
Rigoberta and her family mobilized
Guatemalans during the war to denounce government-led mass atrocities.
Their activism came at a great cost. At a peaceful protest held at the Spanish
Embassy in Guatemala City in 1980, Rigoberta’s father and thirty-seven other campesino
activists were murdered in a fire. Not long after, the Guatemalan army tortured
and murdered Rigoberta’s brother and mother. At age 21, Rigoberta fled
into exile.
Rigoberta spoke publicly about the
plight of the Mayan people in Guatemala while in exile. In 1983 she published I,
Rigoberta Menchú and catapulted the civil war into global
headlines. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 in recognition
of her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation based on
respect for the rights of indigenous peoples. After receiving the
prize Rigoberta returned to Guatemala and established the Rigoberta Menchú Tum
Foundation (FRMT) to support Mayan communities and survivors of
the genocide as they seek justice. Rigoberta and the Foundation have been key
in advocating for justice in several high profile cases in Guatemala,
including the trial against former dictator Efrain Ríos
Montt in May 2013, the Spanish Embassy massacre in January
2015, and the case of 14 survivors of sexual violence in Sepur Zarco in February 2016.
Rigoberta ran for President of
Guatemala in 2007 and 2011 under the banner of WINAQ, the first indigenous-led
political party founded by herself. In 2013 the Autonomous National
University of Mexico (UNAM) appointed her as a Special Investigator within
its Multicultural Nation Program. She continues to seek justice for
all Mayan people impacted by the genocide.
“Only together can we move
forward, so that there is light and hope for all women on the planet.”
For more information please visit
the following link:
Jody Williams received the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1997 for her work to ban landmines through the International
Campaign to Ban Landmines, which shared the Peace Prize with her that year. At
that time, she became the 10th woman – and third American woman – in its almost
100-year history to receive the Prize. Since her protests of the Vietnam
War, she has been a life-long advocate of freedom, self-determination and human
and civil rights.
Like others who have seen the
ravages of war, she is an outspoken peace activist who struggles to reclaim the
real meaning of peace – a concept which goes far beyond the absence of armed
conflict and is defined by human security, not national security. Williams
believes that working for peace is not for the faint of heart. It
requires dogged persistence and a commitment to sustainable peace, built on environmental
justice and meeting the basic needs of the majority of people on our planet.
Since January of 2006, Jody Williams
has worked toward those ends through the Nobel Women’s Initiative, which she
chairs. Along with sister Nobel Laureate Dr. Shirin Ebadi of Iran, she
took the lead in establishing the Nobel Women’s Initiative. They were
joined at that time by sister Nobel Laureates Wangari Maathai (Kenya),
Rigoberta Menchú Tum (Guatemala) and Betty Williams and Mairead Maguire
(Northern Ireland). The Initiative uses the prestige of the Nobel Peace Prize
and the influence and access of the women Nobel Laureates themselves to support
and amplify the efforts of women around the world working for sustainable peace
with justice and equality.
Since 1998, Williams has also served
as a Campaign Ambassador for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
Beginning in early 1992 with two non-governmental organizations and a staff of
one – Jody Williams, she oversaw the Campaign’s growth to over 1,300
organizations in 95 countries working to eliminate antipersonnel landmines. In
an unprecedented cooperative effort with governments, UN bodies and the
International Committee of the Red Cross, she served as a chief strategist and
spokesperson for the ICBL as it dramatically achieved its goal of an
international treaty banning antipersonnel landmines during a diplomatic
conference held in Oslo in September 1997.
Williams continues to be recognized
for her contributions to human rights and global security. She is the recipient
of fifteen honorary degrees, among other recognitions. In 2004, Williams was
named by Forbes Magazine as one of the 100 most powerful women in the world in
the publication of its first such annual list.
She holds the Sam and Cele Keeper
Endowed Professorship in Peace and Social Justice at the Graduate College of
Social Work at the University of Houston where she has been teaching since
2003. In academic year 2012-2013, she became the inaugural Jane Addams
Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Social Justice at the University of Illinois
at Chicago.
Her memoir on life as a grassroots
activist, My Name is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl’s Winding Path to
the Nobel Peace Prize was released by the University of California Press in
early 2013.
“We must teach ourselves to
believe that peace is not a ‘utopian vision’, but a responsibility that must be
worked for each and every day.”
For more information please visit
the following link:
Shirin Ebadi, J.D., was awarded the
2003 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to promote human rights, in particular,
the rights of women, children, and political prisoners in Iran. She is the
first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and only the fifth Muslim
to receive a Nobel Prize in any field.
Dr. Ebadi was one of the first
female judges in Iran. She served as president of the city court of Tehran from
1975 to 1979 and was the first Iranian woman to achieve Chief Justice status.
She, along with other women judges, was dismissed from that position after the
Islamic Revolution in February 1979. She was made a clerk in the court she had
once presided over, until she petitioned for early retirement. After obtaining
her lawyer’s license in 1992, Dr. Ebadi set up private practice. As a lawyer,
Dr. Ebadi has taken on many controversial cases defending political dissidents
and as a result has been arrested numerous times.
In addition to being an
internationally-recognized advocate of human rights, she has also established
many non-governmental organizations in Iran, including the Million Signatures
Campaign, a campaign demanding an end to legal discrimination against women in
Iranian law. Dr. Ebadi is also a university professor and often students
from outside Iran take part in her human rights training courses. She has
published over 70 articles and 13 books dedicated to various aspects of human
rights, some of which have been published by UNICEF. In 2004, she was
named by Forbes Magazine as one of the 100 most powerful women in the world.
In January 2006, along with sister
Laureate Jody Williams, Dr. Ebadi took the lead in establishing the Nobel
Women’s Initiative.
“Human rights is a universal
standard. It is a component of every religion and every civilization.”
For more information please visit
the following link:
Leymah Gbowee received the Nobel
Peace Prize in 2011 for her work in leading a women’s peace movement that
brought an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. Gbowee shared the
prize with fellow Liberian Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Yemen-native Tawakkol
Karman. Gbowee and Sirleaf became the second and third African women to win the
prize, preceded by the late Wangari Maathai of Kenya.
Leymah is the founder and president
of Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa based in Liberia. Her foundation provides
educational and leadership opportunities to girls, women and youth in West
Africa.
Leymah was born in central Liberia
in 1972. She was living with her parents and sisters in Liberia’s capital,
Monrovia, when the First Liberian Civil War erupted. She recalls clearly the
day the first Liberian civil war came to her doorstep. “All of a sudden one
July morning I wake up at 17, going to the university to fulfill my dream of
becoming a medical doctor, and fighting erupted.”
Witnessing the effects of war on
Liberians, she decided to train as a trauma counsellor to treat former child
soldiers.
A second civil war broke out in 1999
and brought systematic rape and brutality to an already war-weary Liberia.
Responding to the conflict, Leymah mobilized an interreligious coalition of
Christian and Muslim women and organized the Women of Liberia Mass Action for
Peace movement. Through Leymah’s leadership, thousands of women staged
pray-ins and nonviolent protests demanding reconciliation and the resuscitation
of high-level peace talks. The pressure pushed President Charles Taylor into
exile, and smoothed the path for the election of Africa’s first female head of
state, fellow 2011 Nobel Laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Documenting these
efforts in the Tribeca Film Festival 2008 Best Documentary winner Pray the
Devil Back to Hell, Leymah demonstrated the power of social cohesion
and relationship-building in the face of political unrest and social turmoil.
In 2007, Leymah earned a Master’s
degree in Conflict Transformation from Eastern Mennonite University in the
United States. Meanwhile, she continued to build women’s agency in fighting for
sustainable peace. She is a founding member and former coordinator for
Women in Peacebuilding/West African Network for Peacebuilding (WIPNET/WANEP).
She also co-founded the Women Peace and Security Network Africa (WIPSEN-Africa)
to promote cross-national peace-building efforts and transform women’s
participation as victims in the crucible of war to mobilized armies for peace.
Ever-focused on sustaining peace,
Leymah continued working on behalf of grassroots efforts in her leadership
positions. She served as a member of both the African Feminist Forum and the
African Women’s Leadership Network on Sexual and Reproductive Rights, and as a
commissioner-designate for the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Through these positions, Leymah addressed the particular vulnerability of
women and children in war-torn societies.
In her current position as President
of Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa, Leymah pushes for greater inclusion of women
as leaders and agents of change in Africa.
Since winning the Nobel Peace Prize,
Leymah travels internationally to speak about the pernicious and devastating
effects of war and gender-based violence. She has been featured on a number of international
television programmes including CNN, BBC and France24, and speaks
internationally advocating for women’s high level inclusion in
conflict-resolution. She has received several honorary degrees from
universities, and is a Global Ambassador for Oxfam.
She serves on the Board of Directors
of the Nobel Women’s Initiative, Gbowee Peace Foundation and the PeaceJam
Foundation, and she is a member of the African Women Leaders Network for
Reproductive Health and Family Planning. She has received honorary degrees from
Rhodes University in South Africa, the University of Alberta in Canada,
Polytechnic University in Mozambique, and University of Dundee in Scotland.
After receiving the Barnard College Medal of Distinction in 2013, she was named
a Distinguished Fellow in Social Justice. Leymah is the proud mother of six
children.
When asked how she first found the
courage to become a peace activist, Leymah explained: “When you’ve lived
true fear for so long, you have nothing to be afraid of. I tell people I was 17
when the war started in Liberia. I was 31 when we started protesting. I
have taken enough dosage of fear that I have gotten immune to fear.”
“It is time to stand up,
sisters, and do some of the most unthinkable things. We have the power to turn
our upsidedown world right.”
For more information please visit
the following link:
Tawakkol Karman was known as
“The Mother of the Revolution” and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in
2011 in recognition of her work in nonviolent struggle for the safety of women
and for women’s rights to full participation in peacebuilding work in Yemen.
Upon being awarded the prize, Tawakkol became the first Yemeni, the first Arab
woman, and the second Muslim woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize, as well as the
youngest Nobel Peace Laureate at the time, at the age of 32.
Karman is a mother of three as well
as a human rights activist, journalist, and politician.
Tawakkol was born in 1979 in Taiz,
Yemen’s third largest city. She studied an undergraduate degree in Commerce
from the University of Science and Technology in Sana’a before completing a
graduate degree in Political Science from the University of Sana’a.
Growing up in a politically
tumultuous country, Tawakkol witnessed the unification of North and South Yemen
in 1990, followed by a civil war between the two factions in 1994 in which the
North triumphed over the South. The civil war led to dissidence in the South as
the repressive Northern government assumed control over the country.
A journalist by profession and human
rights activist by nature, Tawakkol responded to the political instability and
human rights abuses in Yemen by mobilizing others and reporting on injustices.
In 2005, she founded the organization Women Journalists Without Chains, (WJWC)
which advocates for rights and freedoms and provides media skills to
journalists. In addition, the organization produces regular reports on human
rights abuses in Yemen, documenting more than 50 cases of attacks and unfair sentences
against newspapers and writers to date.
In 2007, Tawakkol began organizing
weekly protests in Yemen’s capitol, Sana’a, targeting systemic government
repression and calling for inquiries into corruption and other forms of social
and legal injustice. Tawakkol’s weekly protests continued until 2011, when she
redirected protesters to support the Arab Spring. Tawakkol even brought Yemen’s
revolution to New York speaking directly with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon
and organizing rallies at the UN headquarters.
Bold and outspoken, Tawakkol has
been imprisoned on a number of occasions for her pro-democracy, pro-human
rights protests. Amongst Yemen’s opposition movement, she is known as “mother
of the revolution” and “the iron woman.”
Since receiving the award, Tawakkol
has continued to support female journalists and rally Yemenis against
government corruption and injustice. Fiercely committed to change, Tawakkol
spends the majority of her time in a tent in Change Square, where she continues
her peaceful protests for justice and freedom.
“You have to be strong; you
have to trust yourself that you can build a new country. You have to know that
you have the ability to achieve your dream.”
For more information please visit
the following link:
Dr. Wangari Muta Maathai was awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her actions to promote sustainable
development, democracy and peace and was the first African woman to receive the
Nobel Peace Prize. She passed away in September of 2011.
The first woman in East and Central
Africa to earn a doctorate degree, Professor Maathai was an active member of
the National Council of Women of Kenya from 1976 to 1987 and served as its
chairman from 1981 to 1987. In 1976 she introduced the idea of community-based
tree planting. She continued to develop this idea into a broad-based grassroots
organization whose main focus is poverty reduction and environmental
conservation through tree planting. The organization eventually became known as
the Green Belt Movement (GBM), and to-date has assisted women in planting more
than 40 million trees on community lands including farms, schools and church
compounds.
In December 2002, Professor Maathai
was elected to Kenya’s parliament with an overwhelming 98 percent of the vote.
Until 2007, she represented the Tetu constituency, Nyeri district in central
Kenya (her home region). From 2003 to 2007 Professor Maathai served as
Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resourcesin Kenya’s ninth
parliament.In September 1998, Professor Maathai launched and become co-chair of
the Jubilee 2000 Africa Campaign, which advocates for canceling the debts of
poor African countries. Her campaign against land grabbing (illegal
appropriation of public lands by developers) and the rapacious re-allocation of
forest land received much attention in Kenya and the region.
In June of 2008 the Congo Basin
Forest Fund was launched. The fund protects the forests of the Congo Basin by
supporting projects that make the forest worth more as a living resource, than
it would be cut down. Professor Maathai acted as co-chair and goodwill
ambassador for the initiative.
Professor Maathai addressed the
United Nations on several occasions and spoke on behalf of women at special
sessions of the General Assembly for the five-year review of the 1992 Earth
Summit. In March 2005, she was elected as the first president of the African
Union’s Economic, Social and Cultural Council.
She authored four books; an
autobiography, Unbowed, and an explanation of her organizational method,
The Green Belt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience. The
Challenge for Africa and Replenishing the Earth were both released
in 2010.
“It’s the little things
citizens do. That’s what will make the difference. My little thing is planting
trees.”
For more information please visit
the following link:
“The Nobel Peace Prize is not
awarded for what one has done, but hopefully what one will do.” These are the
words of Betty Williams, who in 1976 along with Mairead Maguire, was awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize for her work to end the sectarian violence in her native
Northern Ireland.
Williams was one of the six founding
members of the Nobel Women’s Initiative in 2006. She currently heads the World
Centers of Compassion for Children International, which was founded in 1997 in
honour of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The organization is headquartered in the
Republic of Ireland, and is building the first City of Compassion for children
in the Basilicata Region of southern Italy. Williams left the Nobel Women’s
Initiative in 2011 in order to devote more time to her work there.
“Compassion is more important
than intellect in calling forth the love that the work of peace needs, and
intuition can often be a far more powerful searchlight than cold reason.”
For more information please visit
the following link:
TOPSHOT – EDITORS NOTE: Graphic content / A wounded Syrian girl awaits rescue from under the rubble next to the body of her sister (hands seen-R) who did not survive regime bombardment in Khan Sheikhun in the southern countryside of the rebel-held Idlib province, on February 26, 2019. – Regime bombardment near Khan Sheikhun, in Idlib province, killed two civilians on Tuesday, raising the civilian death toll to 42 since February 9, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. (Photo by Anas AL-DYAB / AFP) (Photo by ANAS AL-DYAB/AFP via Getty Images)
A wounded
Syrian girl awaits rescue from under the rubble next to the body of her sister
(hands visible at right), who did not survive a regime bombardment in Khan
Sheikhun in the southern countryside of the rebel-held Idlib province, on
February 26, 2019. Five months after this photo, the Syrian photographer who
took it, Anas Al-Dyab, was killed in an air strike in Khan Sheikhun. Al-Dyab
was also a member of the “White Helmets,” a group of volunteers
carrying out search-and-rescue efforts in Syria.
Anas Al-Dyab
/ AFP / Getty
For more information please visit
the following link:
To All Syrians from the Golden
Swallowtail Butterfly
Beautiful Golden Swallowtail
Butterfly
Summersaults in the sky
Drinking sweet nectar
For the beautiful wings to fly
The golden wings span out
Showing the black accented lines
A highlight for your beautiful wings
Two perfect tails you have
But a broken wing
Knowing how far you came from
Do you pass by Syria lately?
No! No one cultivates the gardens
They are busy fighting with each
other
No trees, no plants
No flowers giving me the nectar to
drink
They are running away
From their homes and their land
One million children are refugees
now
What are you doing Syrian people?
Everybody stops fighting
Please come!
Plant your trees for butterflies and
bees
Show your children how nice
butterflies can be
They help to fertilize your plants
Producing fruits for your children
to enjoy
Syrian people you have a long
culture
Your arts and your country are
beautiful
Do not ruin your ancestors’ good
reputation
Preserve your culture for your
children to grow
Show your children your fruitful
gardens
And the beautiful Golden Butterfly
will visit you
The butterfly says,
You will see no tears
No fear on your children faces
But the sound of your children’s
laughter
The joy of seeing my beautiful wings
Everybody stops using weapons
Please come!
To enjoy your tasty food
Your dance, your music, your arts
And your ancient civilization
We want to visit you
Show us how civilized Syrian Society
can be
Ing-On Vibulbhan-Watts, Friday,
August 23, 2013, 9:45 pm
The Golden Swallowtail Butterfly was
captured by me on Saturday, August 17, 2013 at our backyard garden in downtown
Newark, New Jersey. I would like to dedicate this video to all the children in
Syria.
Middle: Vincent
van Gogh and his letters to his brother – Ing-On Vibulbhan-Watts’ Artwork
Right:
Homage to the Dragon – John Watts’ Artwork
Ing-On
Vibulbhan-Watts and John Watts, Saturday, November 30, 2019
Kai, The Artist our
grandson, who just turned four years old.
I have a better
chance to learn human behavior and development from our grandson than our only
daughter when she was young. This was because we were so busy with
working and now, we have more time to observe our grandson’s interaction with
other children, including his behavior as a baby and his progress up to now.
Netherlands-based artists Super A (previously) and Collin van der Sluijs (previously) teamed up earlier this year to paint this phenomenal mural
titled Starling
on the side of a residential building in Berlin. The 137-foot-tall mural piece
depicts a large bird whose ornate chest is comprised of a dense patchwork of
glistening jewels and plants. Starling was created at the invitation of Urban Nation as part of the One Wall Mural Project.
All photos by Nika Kramer. (via StreetArtNews, BerlijnBlog.nl, Urban Nation)
When looking at these murals by
Brisbane artist Fintan Magee
they seem almost impossible to contain. Literally dripping with color, his bold
images often bleed off the canvas and spill onto the street or sidewalk, fully
utilizing every available surface, as if maybe even that isn’t enough. Via
Analogue/Digital:
Moving away from traditional
graffiti in recent years his guerilla murals often inhabit the isolated,
abandoned and broken corners of the city. Mixing surreal and figurative imagery
his paintings are deeply integrated with the urban environment and explore
themes of waste, consumption, loss and transition and contain a sentimentality
and softness influenced by children’s books.
His most recent piece (top) was just completed in Toowoomba, a city in South-East
Queensland, Australia. You can see much more of his work on his website, and on Instagram.
(via StreetArtNews)
The anonymous artist
duo MonkeyBird creates large-scale paintings of
black-and-white cross contour depictions of mythical animals accented in gold.
Most MonkeyBird artworks incorporate a humanoid monkey and bird, which
represent “the two faces of humankind, the monkey being the realist, and the
bird being a dreamer,” according to Paris-based 5Art Gallery. Old-world details like classical architecture, timekeeping
devices, and weight scales add to the timeless look of the pair’s paintings.
MonkeyBird’s members bring training in graphic design, as well as object and
industrial design to their artistic aesthetic, which can be seen in their
clean, technique-driven stenciling.
Based in Bordeaux, France,
MonkeyBird travels widely to create outdoor murals as well as indoor
installations. They’ll be working in Moscow from October 2 to the 11th. Follow
along with MonkeyBird’s newest projects on Instagram,
and pick up a limited edition print in their online store. (via Hi-Fructose)
For more information please visit the following
link:
Ing & John’s Street Art and International
Street Art-Part 10
On this edition for Sunday, December
8, the U.S. Navy releases names of the three sailors killed in the Pensacola
rampage, House Democrats to present their case for impeaching President Trump,
and Ukraine and Russia prepare for peace talks after nearly six years of
conflict. Hari Sreenivasan anchors from New York. Stream your PBS favorites
with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
PBS NewsHour Weekend full episode December 7, 2019
On this edition for Saturday,
December 7, a U.S. official says a Saudi officer watched mass shooting videos
before his deadly rampage at Pensacola’s naval base, and Scotland eyes an
opportunity for independence as Great Britain gets ready to head to the polls.
Hari Sreenivasan anchors from New York. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS
app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Genuine apology goes beyond remorse,
says legendary playwright Eve Ensler. In this frank, wrenching talk, she shares
how she transformed her own experience of abuse into wisdom on what wrongdoers
can do and say to truly repent — and offers a four-step roadmap to help begin
the process. (This talk contains mature content.)
This talk was presented at an
official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
They’ve been called the “saints
of Somalia.” Doctor Hawa Abdi and her daughter Deqo Mohamed discuss their
medical clinic in Somalia, where — in the face of civil war and open
oppression of women — they’ve built a hospital, a school and a community of
peace.
This talk was presented at an
official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
Since the 1950s, when the world was
first introduced to the flexible, durable wonder of plastic, 8.3 billion metric
tons of it has been produced. Plastic doesn’t biodegrade, so technically, all
of that tonnage is still sitting someplace on the planet. And a lot of it is in
China.
That’s because when hundreds of
countries around the world said they were “recycling” their plastic over the
past few decades, half the time what they really meant was they were exporting
it to another country. And most of the time, that meant they were exporting it
to China. Since 1992, China (and Hong Kong, which acts as an entry port into
mainland China) have imported 72 percent of all plastic waste.
But China has had enough. In 2017,
China announced it was permanently banning the import of nonindustrial plastic
waste. According to a paper published in June 2018 in the journal Science Advances, that will leave the world—mostly high-income
countries—with an additional 111 million metric tons of plastic to deal with by
2030. And right now, those countries have no good way to handle it.
As of 2016, the top five countries
exporting their plastic to China were the US, the UK, Mexico, Japan, and
Germany.
For example, that year, the US
exported 56 percent of its plastic waste to China, with another 32 percent
going to Hong Kong (of which most is then exported to China). The US exported
its remaining 12 percent to Mexico, Canada, and India. Germany, meanwhile,
exports 69 percent of its plastic to China.
But because flows of plastic are
convoluted, it’s possible these numbers don’t tell the whole story. For
example, the researchers note that the UK exports 51 percent of its plastic to
Germany, but given how much plastic Germany exports to China, it’s seems
plausible that much of the UK’s plastic ultimately ends up in China. The same
goes for Mexico, which exports 55 percent of its plastic to the US. The US, in
turn, exports most of its plastic to China. But the researchers write the
United Nations trade data on which they based their research does not monitor
flows of plastic between countries, so “we do not know whether that waste is
then processed domestically or exported to Hong Kong or China,” they write.
China has in the past tried to limit
plastic imports. In 2013, the country implemented a “Green Fence” policy of
restricting the types of plastic waste it would accept, with the goal of
reducing contamination. The policy lasted only a year, but it was enough to rattle
the waste industry. “As a result, plastic recycling industries experienced a
globally cascading effect since little infrastructure exists elsewhere to
manage the rejected waste,” the researchers write.
That’s already happening again, and
now the ban is permanent.
The rule went into effect on January
1, 2018, and plastic immediately began piling up in several European countries,
the port of Hong Kong, and the US. “My inventory is out of control,” Steve
Frank, who owns recycling plants in Oregon, which up until then had exported
most of its materials to China, told the New York Times
at the time. He hoped he’d be able to start exporting more waste to countries
like Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Malaysia—“anywhere we can”—but “they can’t make
up the difference,” he said.
At the end of the day, even the 111
million metric tons of plastic that the researchers found would be back in the
laps of countries who used to export to China is still a fraction of all the
plastic that gets produced.
“We know from our previous studies that only 9 percent of all plastic ever produced has been
recycled, and the majority of it ends up in landfills or the natural
environment,” Jenna Jambeck, an associate professor at the University of
Georgia’s college of engineering who co-authored the study, said in a statement.
”Without bold new ideas and system-wide changes, even the relatively low
current recycling rates will no longer be met, and our previously recycled
materials could now end up in landfills.”
For more information please visit the following link:
Five Common Misconceptions About the Electoral College
Defenders of the Electoral College
argue that it was created to combat majority tyranny and support federalism,
and that it continues to serve those purposes. This stance depends on a
profound misunderstanding of the history of the institution.
Board of Governors Professor at
Rutgers University-Camden
North Carolina Electoral College representatives sign the Certificates of Vote after they all cast their ballots for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in the State Capitol building in Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S., December 19, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake – RC12F8CC65F0
North Carolina Electoral College
representatives sign the Certificates of Vote after they all cast their ballots
for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in the State Capitol building in Raleigh,
North Carolina, U.S., December 19, 2016.Jonathan Drake / Reuters
Two of the nation’s last three
presidents won the presidency in the Electoral College, even though they lost
the popular vote nationwide. In 2000, Al Gore outpolled George W. Bush by more
than 540,000 votes but lost in the Electoral College, 271–266. Sixteen years
later, Hillary Clinton tallied almost 3 million more votes than Donald Trump
but lost decisively in the Electoral College, 306–232. And, as a recent New York Times poll suggested, the 2020 election could very well again deliver the
presidency to the loser of the popular vote.
Despite this, defenders of the
Electoral College argue that it was created to combat majority tyranny and
support federalism, and that it continues to serve those purposes. For example,
Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas, responding to Representative Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez’s recent criticism of the Electoral College, tweeted that
“we live in a republic, which means 51% of the population doesn’t get to boss
around the other 49%,” and that the Electoral College “promotes more equal regional representation and protects the interests of sparsely populated states.”
But arguments like these are flawed,
misunderstanding the pertinent history. Below, I identify five common mistakes
made in arguing for the preservation of the Electoral College.
But as tempting as it is to read
history in the light of contemporary concerns, the debate at the convention focused on a
different issue: Should Congress choose the
president? Both the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan, the two primary
alternatives at the Convention, proposed that Congress select the president.
This was unsurprising because in most states at the time, the legislature chose
the governor. On June 1, the convention voted 8–2 that Congress should elect
the president, and the delegates would affirm that decision on three other
occasions.
The frequency with which the
delegates revisited the issue reveals not their confidence but their
dissatisfaction. Most delegates wanted the executive to check legislative
usurpations and block unjust or unwise laws, but they feared that dependence on
the legislature for election—and possible reelection—would compromise the
executive’s independence. Some delegates hoped to avoid this danger by limiting
the president to a single term, but as Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania observed,
this could deprive the nation of a highly qualified executive, eliminate the
hope of continuation in office as a spur to good behavior, and encourage the
executive to “make hay while the sun shines.” James Madison added that election
by the legislature would “agitate and divide the legislature so much that the
public interest would materially suffer” and might invite the intervention of
foreign powers seeking to influence the choice.
The difficulty lay in finding an
alternative to legislative selection, and the delegates considered and rejected
various possibilities, including popular election. Ultimately, perhaps in
desperation, they referred the issue to the Committee on Unfinished Parts. On
September 4, less than two weeks before the convention ended, the committee
proposed the Electoral College. Its proposal mirrored the states’ distribution
of power in Congress; each state had as many electoral votes as it had members
of Congress. But because the electors dispersed after voting for the president,
the Electoral College did not threaten the independence of the executive. With
only minor adjustments—most notably, the House replaced the Senate as the body
that would select the president if a majority of electors failed to agree on a
candidate—the convention endorsed the proposal.
The point of all this is, the
Electoral College did not emerge because of opposition to popular election of
the president.
But, once again, this interpretation
of history is wrong. The convention did twice reject popular election of the
president. But the delegates who rejected it did not object to popular
elections per se—they had no problem with popular election of the House of
Representatives or state legislatures. Rather, they were skeptical of a
national popular election, primarily for reasons that are no longer relevant
today.
First, they feared that people would
lack the information to make an informed choice as to who might be an
appropriate candidate for the presidency or who might be the best choice among
candidates. Thus George Mason of Virginia claimed,
“It would be as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper candidate for chief
Magistrate to the people, as it would be to refer a trial of colours to a blind
man.”
But his reason was that “the extent
of the Country renders it impossible that the people can have the requisite
capacity to judge of the respective pretensions of the Candidates.” In such
circumstances, he thought, voters would naturally gravitate to candidates from
their own state. Delegates who favored popular election replied that “the
increasing intercourse among the people of the states would render important characters
less and less unknown,” and that “continental characters will multiply as we
more or more coalesce,” reducing state parochialism. Today, with mass
communication and interminable campaigns, lack of information is no longer a
problem.
Second, some southern delegates
feared that popular election of the president would disadvantage their states.
James Madison noted that, given less restrictive voting laws, “the right of
suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern states,”
which would give them an advantage in a popular election. Beyond that, a
popular vote would not count the disenfranchised enslaved population, reducing
southern influence.
The Electoral College solved both
those problems, awarding electoral votes based on a state’s population, not its
electorate, and importing the three-fifths compromise into presidential
elections. The effects were immediate and dramatic—in 1800 John Adams would
have defeated Thomas Jefferson had only free persons been counted in awarding
electoral votes. Obviously, these concerns no longer apply, although popular
election would encourage states to increase their influence by expanding their
electorate, while the Electoral College offers no such incentive.
Third, some small-state delegates
opposed popular election because they feared that larger states, with their
greater voting power, would dominate. Yet these same delegates also objected to
the Electoral College, insisting it too gave excessive power to the large
states. Their concerns were addressed by stipulating that should no candidate
receive a majority of the electoral vote, the selection would devolve on the
House of Representatives, with each state casting a single vote.
What is striking about the
convention’s debate on popular election of the president is that its opponents
did not claim it would encourage majority tyranny. Doubtless the delegates were
aware of the danger of such a tyranny—Madison first presented his famous
discussion of “majority faction” at the convention—but no delegate objected to
popular election on that basis, and Madison himself supported popular election
of the president.
Given the current debate on
presidential selection, this might seem obvious, but the deliberations at the convention were much more
fluid. James Wilson of Pennsylvania first
proposed popular election of the president, but when his motion failed, he
immediately raised the possibility of a mediated popular election: electors
chosen by the people who would select the executive. All the other leading
advocates of popular election—Morris, Madison, and Alexander Hamilton—also
supported the Electoral College, primarily as an alternative to congressional
selection. In defending the Electoral College, Madison and Hamilton emphasized
its popular character. Madison in “Federalist No. 39” noted that “the President
is indirectly derived from the choice of the people,” and Hamilton in
“Federalist No. 68” concurred: “The sense of the people should operate in the
choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided,” and
reelection should depend on “the people themselves.”
The Constitution was, in James
Madison’s words, “in strictness neither a national nor a federal Constitution,
but a composition of both.” It empowered state legislatures to determine how
the presidential electors were to be chosen, and if the Electoral College failed
to select a president, the House of Representatives would, with each state
casting a single vote. However, the debates during the Constitutional
Convention make clear that the Electoral College was not intended to protect
the states or enhance the influence of state governments and state
perspectives.
The convention delegates sought to
safeguard the independence of the national executive from state governments.
They overwhelmingly rejected proposals that the executive be selected by state
legislatures or by state governors. They also rejected a proposal that the
president be removable upon request by a majority of state legislatures and did not even consider the New Jersey Plan’s
provision that the president “be recalled by
Congress when requested by the majority of executive of the states.” This was
hardly surprising. Most delegates were sharply critical of state legislatures
and wanted to ensure that the president had the independence necessary to
oppose their schemes. Madison summarized the prevailing sentiment: “The President is to act for the people, not the States.”
Although the Electoral College
allowed state legislatures to determine how electors would be chosen, it was
expected that once selected, the electors would operate independently of their
state governments. The constitutional ban on senators serving as electors and
the choice of the House to resolve deadlocks in the Electoral College ensured
that those selected by (and perhaps influenced by) state legislatures would not
play a role in selecting the president. Beyond that, the delegates expected
that the electors’ deliberations would remain secret, that they would be free
to choose the candidates they believed most qualified, and that their votes
would be tabulated and transmitted to the president of the Senate without any
indication as to who voted for which candidate, so that no political
retribution could be exacted. The Constitution’s requirement that electors vote
for two candidates, at least one of whom was not from their state, served to
reduce state parochialism and encourage a national perspective.
In sum, the Electoral College was
not designed to promote federalism—Martin Diamond,
one of the most thoughtful proponents of the Electoral College, accurately
described the design as “an anti-states-rights device, a way of keeping the
election from state politicians and giving it to the people.” The core
protections of federalism, today as in the past, are the vitality of state
governments, the division of powers between nation and state, and
representation in Congress along state lines. The replacement of the Electoral
College by a nationwide popular vote would threaten none of these. Voting procedures
would remain the same, the only difference being that votes would be tabulated
nationwide rather than state by state.
To begin with, to some extent those
expectations were unclear. For example, after the Electoral College was proposed,
some delegates claimed that in most elections—George Mason predicted “nineteen
times in twenty”—no candidate would get a majority of the electoral votes, and
so the House of Representatives would elect the president. This of course would
compromise the independence of the executive, and both Madison and Hamilton
unsuccessfully proposed that the House’s role be eliminated, with the candidate
winning a plurality of the electoral vote becoming president. Other delegates
expected that a majority of the electors would coalesce around a single
candidate. In “Federalist No. 39,” Madison presumed that “the eventual
election” would be made by the House, but this was mere speculation and quickly
disproved.
Even when the delegates’ hopes and
expectations were clear, constitutional amendments have altered the operation
of the Electoral College. The Twelfth Amendment, adopted after the contested
election of 1800, requires electors to specify for whom they are voting for
president and vice president. The Twentieth Amendment, by shifting the date
congressional terms begin to January 3, ensures that the newly elected House of
Representatives, rather than the previous House, would elect the president if no
candidate received an electoral-vote majority. And the Twenty-Third Amendment
extends the right to vote in presidential elections to U.S. citizens residing
in the District of Columbia, awarding the District three electoral votes,
though the Electoral College continues to deny American citizens living in
Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories any role in choosing the president.
Even more important have been
changes in political practice. In “Federalist No. 64,” John Jay maintained that
the Electoral College “will in general be composed of the most enlightened and
respectable citizens,” and in “Federalist No. 68,” Alexander Hamilton described the electors as “most likely to possess the information and discernment”
necessary to choose the chief executive. But by 1800 political parties had
developed, and elector discretion was replaced by elector commitment to the
parties’ candidates. Today many states do not even bother to list the electors’
names on the ballot. Interestingly, Hamilton and Madison as party leaders
played a crucial role in this transformation.
The Constitution authorized state
legislatures to determine how electors were to be selected, but by 1828 every
state but South Carolina chose its electors by popular vote, and today all
states do. Moreover, despite the initial expectation that electors would be
chosen in districts, by 1836 party competition had promoted a winner-take-all
allocation of electors in all the states. (Maine and Nebraska have since bucked
that trend.) This in turn has affected presidential campaigns, as more and more
candidates target their speeches, campaign appearances, and ads at “swing
states” and largely ignore states they confidently expect to carry or to lose.
Meanwhile, the proliferation of
primary elections, the nationalization of the choice of presidential
candidates, the move toward candidate-based campaigns, and the reduced
importance of state party organizations have fundamentally transformed
presidential selection, without changing how votes are awarded under the
Electoral College.
In “Federalist No. 68,” Alexander Hamilton contended that the Electoral College
would frustrate “the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in
our councils.” It would also “afford a moral certainty that the office of
President [would] seldom fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent
degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” In addition, it would keep
from the office candidates with “talents for low intrigue, and the little arts
of popularity.” In evaluating the Electoral College today, one must judge
whether Hamilton’s hopes have been vindicated.
As we approach the end of a year of
unrest, here is a look back at some of the major news events and moments of
2019. Massive protests were staged against existing governments in Hong Kong,
Chile, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Haiti, Algeria, Sudan, and Bolivia, while
climate-change demonstrations and strikes took place worldwide. An impeachment
inquiry into President Donald Trump was started, conflict in Syria continued,
the United States won the Women’s World Cup, Hurricane Dorian lashed the
Bahamas, and so much more. Here, we present the Top 25 news photos of 2019. Be
sure to also see these more comprehensive stories—2019: The Year in Photos, Part 1,
Part 2,
and Part 3.
Hints: View this page full screen.
Skip to the next and previous photo by typing j/k or ?/?.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern hugs a mosque-goer at the Kilbirnie mosque in Wellington, New Zealand, on March 17, 2019. 50 people are confirmed dead and 36 are injured still in hospital following shooting attacks on two mosques in Christchurch on Friday, 15 March. The attack is the worst mass shooting in New Zealand’s history. (Hagen Hopkins / Getty)
Jacinda
Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand, hugs a mosque-goer at the Kilbirnie
mosque in Wellington, on March 17, 2019. Earlier that day, 51 people were
killed and another 49 were injured in shooting attacks on two mosques in
Christchurch—the worst mass shooting and terror attack in New Zealand’s
history. #
Hagen
Hopkins / Getty
The steeple of Notre-Dame Cathedral collapses as the cathedral is engulfed in flames in central Paris on April 15, 2019. (Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt / AFP / Getty)
The spire of
Notre-Dame collapses as the cathedral is engulfed in flames in central Paris on
April 15, 2019. Much of the roof collapsed in the fire, which ignited during
renovations. President Emmanuel Macron immediately indicated that the cathedral
would be rebuilt, but the method and form of the reconstruction became a
political battle, with one side favoring modern redesigns, and the other
advocating for an exact replica of the previous structure. #
Geoffroy Van
Der Hasselt / AFP / Getty
Spike Lee, winner of the Best Adapted Screenplay award for BlacKkKlansman, attends the 91st annual Academy Awards Governors Ball at the Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood, California, on February 24, 2019. (Robyn Beck / AFP / Getty)
Spike Lee,
winner of the Best Adapted Screenplay award for BlacKkKlansman, attends
the 91st annual Academy Awards Governors Ball at the Hollywood & Highland
Center in Hollywood, California, on February 24, 2019. Although Lee had been
awarded an honorary Oscar in 2015, this was his first competitive Academy
Award. #
Robyn Beck /
AFP / Getty
TOPSHOT – People raise their hands during a mass opposition rally against President Nicolas Maduro in which Venezuela’s National Assembly head Juan Guaido (out of frame) declared himself the country’s “acting president”, on the anniversary of a 1958 uprising that overthrew a military dictatorship, in Caracas on January 23, 2019. – “I swear to formally assume the national executive powers as acting president of Venezuela to end the usurpation, (install) a transitional government and hold free elections,” said Guaido as thousands of supporters cheered. Moments earlier, the loyalist-dominated Supreme Court ordered a criminal investigation of the opposition-controlled legislature. (Photo by Federico PARRA / AFP) (Photo credit should read FEDERICO PARRA/AFP via Getty Images)
People raise
their hands during a mass opposition rally against President Nicolás Maduro, in
which Venezuela’s National Assembly head, Juan Guaidó, declared himself the
country’s “acting president” on the anniversary of a 1958 uprising
that overthrew a military dictatorship, in Caracas, Venezuela, on January 23,
2019. The movement, sparked by disputed election results, led to a presidential
crisis in Venezuela that continued throughout the year. #
Federico
Parra / AFP / Getty
President Donald Trump turns to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California as he delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., as Vice President Mike Pence watches on February 5, 2019. (Doug Mills / The New York Times via AP)
President
Donald Trump turns to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California as he delivers
his State of the Union address to a Joint Session of Congress on Capitol Hill
in Washington, D.C., as Vice President Mike Pence watches, on February 5, 2019.
#
Doug Mills /
The New York Times via AP
People are evacuated by a member of security forces at the scene of a terror attack at the Dusit Hotel compound in Nairobi, Kenya, on January 15, 2019. (Baz Ratner / Reuters)
People are
evacuated by a member of security forces at the scene of a terror attack at the
Dusit Hotel compound in Nairobi, Kenya, on January 15, 2019. The attack,
carried out by members of the jihadist militant group Al-Shabaab, left 21
civilians dead. #
Baz Ratner /
Reuters
TOPSHOT – EDITORS NOTE: Graphic content / A wounded Syrian girl awaits rescue from under the rubble next to the body of her sister (hands seen-R) who did not survive regime bombardment in Khan Sheikhun in the southern countryside of the rebel-held Idlib province, on February 26, 2019. – Regime bombardment near Khan Sheikhun, in Idlib province, killed two civilians on Tuesday, raising the civilian death toll to 42 since February 9, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. (Photo by Anas AL-DYAB / AFP) (Photo by ANAS AL-DYAB/AFP via Getty Images)
A wounded Syrian girl awaits rescue from under the rubble
next to the body of her sister (hands visible at right), who did not survive a
regime bombardment in Khan Sheikhun in the southern countryside of the
rebel-held Idlib province, on February 26, 2019. Five months after this photo,
the Syrian photographer who took it, Anas Al-Dyab, was killed in an air strike
in Khan Sheikhun. Al-Dyab was also a member of the “White Helmets,” a
group of volunteers carrying out search-and-rescue efforts in Syria. #
Anas Al-Dyab / AFP / Getty
Dogs pull a sled on water-covered sea ice near Qaanaaq, Greenland, on June 13, 2019. An abundance of water from a rapid summer melt had pooled on top of a wide swath of solid sea ice. (Steffen Olsen / Danish Meteorological Institute via Reuters)
Dogs pull a
sled on water-covered sea ice near Qaanaaq, Greenland, on June 13, 2019. The
dogs were forced to wade after an abundance of water from a rapid summer melt
had pooled on top of a wide swath of solid sea ice. #
Steffen
Olsen / Danish Meteorological Institute via Reuters
TOPSHOT – A boy walks out of the sea while removing oil spilled on Itapuama beach located in the city of Cabo de Santo Agostinho, Pernambuco state, Brazil, on October 21, 2019. – Large blobs of oil staining more than 130 beaches in northeastern Brazil began appearing in early September and have now turned up along a 2,000km stretch of the Atlantic coastline. The source of the patches remain a mystery despite President Jair Bolsonaro’s assertions they came from outside the country and were possibly the work of criminals. (Photo by LEO MALAFAIA / AFP) (Photo by LEO MALAFAIA/AFP via Getty Images)
A boy walks
out of the sea while removing oil spilled on Itapuama beach, located in the
city of Cabo de Santo Agostinho in Pernambuco state, Brazil, on October 21,
2019. Large blobs of oil staining more than 130 beaches in northeastern Brazil
began appearing in early September and have now turned up along a
2,000-kilometer stretch of the Atlantic coastline. The source of the patches
remains a mystery despite President Jair Bolsonaro’s assertions they came from
outside the country and were possibly the work of criminals. #
Leo Malafaia
/ AFP / Getty
HONG KONG – AUGUST 18: Thousands of anti-government protesters march on a street after leaving a rally in Victoria Park on August 18, 2019 in Hong Kong, China. Pro-democracy protesters have continued rallies on the streets of Hong Kong against a controversial extradition bill since 9 June as the city plunged into crisis after waves of demonstrations and several violent clashes. Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam apologized for introducing the bill and declared it “dead”, however protesters have continued to draw large crowds with demands for Lam’s resignation and completely withdraw the bill. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
Thousands of
pro-democracy protesters march on a street after leaving a rally in Victoria
Park on August 18, 2019, in Hong Kong. Demonstrations have taken place on the
streets of Hong Kong since June 9, beginning as a reaction to a controversial
extradition bill, and evolving into broader demands for democracy and
investigations into police brutality, challenging Beijing’s authority. #
Chris McGrath
/ Getty
Police detain pro-democracy demonstrators during a demonstration in Hong Kong on September 29, 2019. (Kin Cheung / AP)
Police
detain pro-democracy demonstrators during a demonstration in Hong Kong on
September 29, 2019. #
Kin Cheung /
AP
U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as they meet at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, in Panmunjom, South Korea, June 30, 2019. KCNA via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. REUTERS IS UNABLE TO INDEPENDENTLY VERIFY THIS IMAGE. NO THIRD PARTY SALES. SOUTH KOREA OUT. NO COMMERCIAL OR EDITORIAL SALES IN SOUTH KOREA. – RC1849E5AB80
U.S. President
Donald Trump shakes hands with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as they meet at
the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, in Panmunjom, South Korea, on
June 30, 2019, in this image provided by North Korea’s Korean Central News
Agency (KCNA). During the meeting, Trump became the first sitting U.S.
president to cross the border and enter North Korea. #
KCNA via
Reuters
Students take part in a march for the environment and the climate in Brussels, Belgium, on February 21, 2019. (Emmanuel Dunand / AFP / Getty)
Students
take part in a march for the environment and the climate in Brussels, Belgium,
on February 21, 2019. Environmental protests and strikes, most led by students,
took place around the world multiple times throughout the year. #
Emmanuel
Dunand / AFP / Getty
Guatemalan migrant Lety Perez embraces her son Anthony while praying to ask a member of the Mexican National Guard to let them cross into the United States, as seen from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, July 22, 2019. Lety Perez fell to her haunches, a clenched hand covering her face as she wept, an arm clutching her small 6-year old son, who glared defiantly at the Mexican National Guard soldier blocking them from crossing into the United States. The plight of this mother and son who had traveled some 1,500 miles (2,410 km) from their home country of Guatemala to the border city of Ciudad Juarez, only to be stopped mere feet from the United States, was captured by Reuters photographer Jose Luis Gonzalez as twilight approached on Monday. “The woman begged and pleaded with the National Guard to let them cross … she wanted to cross to give a better future” to her young son Anthony Diaz, Gonzalez said. The soldier, dressed in desert fatigues, an assault rifle slung over his shoulder, said he was only following orders, according to Gonzalez. The soldier did not disclose his name. (Jose Luis Gonzalez / Reuters)
Lety Perez,
a Guatemalan migrant, embraces her son Anthony while praying to ask a member of
the Mexican National Guard to let them cross into the United States, as seen
from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on July 22, 2019. Perez and her 6-year-old son had
traveled some 1,500 miles from their home country, only to be stopped mere feet
from the United States. #
Jose Luis
Gonzalez / Reuters
A long-exposure photograph shows a tree burning during the Kincade fire off Highway 128, east of Healdsburg, California, on October 29, 2019. (Philip Pacheco / AFP / Getty)
A
long-exposure photograph shows a tree burning during the Kincade fire off
Highway 128, east of Healdsburg, California, on October 29, 2019. This year’s fire
season in California, which lasts through December, has seen more than 6,400
reported fires, including the largest, the Kincade fire, which burned more than
77,000 acres alone. #
Philip
Pacheco / AFP / Getty
United States’ forward Megan Rapinoe celebrates scoring her team’s first goal during the France 2019 Women’s World Cup quarter-final football match between France and United States, on June 28, 2019, at the Parc des Princes stadium in Paris. (Photo by FRANCK FIFE / AFP) (Photo by FRANCK FIFE/AFP via Getty Images)
The United
States forward Megan Rapinoe celebrates scoring her team’s first goal during
the Women’s World Cup France 2019 quarter-final soccer match between France and
the United States, on June 28, 2019, at the Parc des Princes stadium in Paris.
The U.S. advanced to the final and won the championship on July 7 in a match
against the Netherlands. #
Franck Fife
/ AFP / Getty
An aerial view of damage caused by Hurricane Dorian is seen in Marsh Harbour on Great Abaco Island on September 4, 2019, in Great Abaco, Bahamas. (Scott Olson / Getty)
An aerial
view of damage caused by Hurricane Dorian is seen in Marsh Harbour on Great
Abaco Island on September 4, 2019, in Great Abaco, Bahamas. Dorian struck the
islands as a Category 5 storm, and was responsible for at least 60 deaths and
more than $3 billion in damages—the worst natural disaster to ever hit the
Bahamas. #
Scott Olson
/ Getty
A young Rohingya is seen during a rainstorm at the Nayapara refugee camp on August 21, 2019, in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Rohingya refugees said on August 21 that they did not want to return to Myanmar without their rights and citizenship, with repatriation set to start on August 22. August 25 marked the second anniversary of the Rohingya crisis in Bangladesh after Myanmar’s military crackdown on the ethnic Muslim minority forced over 700,000 to flee to Bangladesh from violence and torture. The United Nations has stated that it was a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. (Allison Joyce / Getty)
A young
Rohingya refugee is seen during a rainstorm at the Nayapara refugee camp in
Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, on August 21, 2019. Rohingya refugees said on August
21 that they did not want to return to Myanmar (also called Burma) without
their rights and citizenship, with repatriation set to start on August 22. August
25 marked the second anniversary of the Rohingya crisis in Bangladesh after
Myanmar’s military crackdown on the ethnic Muslim minority forced more than
700,000 to flee to Bangladesh from violence and torture. The United Nations has
stated that it was a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. #
Allison
Joyce / Getty
A huge plume of ash rises from Raikoke Volcano on the Kuril Islands, as viewed from the International Space Station on June 22, 2019. The small, oval-shaped island most recently exploded in 1924, and before that in 1778. Astronauts shot this photograph of the eruption as the column of ash spread out in a part of the plume known as the umbrella region—the area where the density of the plume and the surrounding air equalize and the plume stops rising. The ring of clouds at the base of the column appears to be water vapor. (NASA Earth Observatory)
A huge plume
of ash rises from Raikoke volcano in the Kuril Islands, as viewed from the
International Space Station on June 22, 2019. The small, oval-shaped island
most recently exploded in 1924, and before that in 1778. Astronauts shot this
photograph of the eruption as the column of ash spread out in a part of the
plume known as the umbrella region—the area where the density of the plume and
the surrounding air equalize and the plume stops rising. The ring of clouds at
the base of the column appears to be water vapor. #
NASA Earth
Observatory
TOPSHOT – A demonstrator wearing Guy Fawkes mask gestures during a protest against the government, in Santiago on November 18, 2019. – President Sebastian Pinera condemned on Sunday for the first time what he called abuses committed by police in dealing with four weeks of violent unrest that have rocked Chile and which has left 22 people dead and more than 2,000 injured. Chileans have been protesting social and economic inequality, and against an entrenched political elite that comes from a small number of the wealthiest families in the country, among other issues. (Photo by CLAUDIO REYES / AFP) (Photo by CLAUDIO REYES/AFP via Getty Images)
A
demonstrator wearing a Guy Fawkes mask gestures in front of others shining
green lasers, during a protest against the government in Santiago, Chile, on
November 18, 2019. Weeks of violent unrest have rocked Chile, leaving at least
22 people dead and more than 2,000 injured. Chileans are protesting social and
economic inequality, and against an entrenched political elite. #
Claudio
Reyes / AFP / Getty
ATTENTION EDITORS – SENSITIVE MATERIAL. THIS IMAGE MAY OFFEND OR DISTURB A riot police officer on fire reacts during a protest against Chile’s government in Santiago, Chile November 4, 2019. REUTERS/Jorge Silva TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY – RC13D207B4A0
A
riot-police officer reacts after a Molotov cocktail landed nearby, splashing
fire onto several officers during a protest against Chile’s government in
Santiago, Chile, on November 4, 2019. #
Jorge Silva
/ Reuters
22-year-old Alaa Salah stands on a car leading chants during a protest demanding that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir step down in Khartoum, Sudan, on April 8, 2019, in this still image taken from a social-media video obtained on April 9. (Lana H. Haroun via Reuters)
Alaa Salah,
22, stands on a car leading chants during a protest demanding that Sudanese
President Omar al-Bashir step down, in Khartoum, Sudan, on April 8, 2019, in
this still image taken from a social-media video obtained on April 9. Months of
demonstrations and civil disobedience led up to the Sudanese Armed Forces
staging a coup on April 11, removing the dictator Bashir from power after 30
years. #
Lana H.
Haroun / Social Media
TOPSHOT – A Syrian boy on his bicycle looks at a convoy of US armoured vehicles patrolling fields near the northeastern town of Qahtaniyah at the border with Turkey, on October 31, 2019. – US forces accompanied by Kurdish fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) patrolled part of Syria’s border with Turkey, in the first such move since Washington withdrew troops from the area earlier this month, an AFP correspondent reported. (Photo by Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP) (Photo by DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images)
A Syrian boy
on his bicycle looks at a convoy of U.S. armored vehicles patrolling fields
near the northeastern town of Qahtaniyah at the border with Turkey, on October
31, 2019. U.S. forces accompanied by Kurdish fighters of the Syrian Democratic
Forces (SDF) patrolled part of Syria’s border with Turkey, in the first such
move since Washington withdrew troops from the area earlier in October, an AFP
correspondent reported. #
Delil
Souleiman / AFP / Getty
Democratic Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Adam Schiff awaits charge d’Affaires at the U.S. embassy in Ukraine Bill Taylor and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia George Kent to testify before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on the impeachment inquiry into President Donald J. Trump, on Capitol Hill, on November 13, 2019. (Jim Lo Scalzo / Pool via Reuters)
Democratic
Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff awaits Bill Taylor,
charge d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, and George Kent, the deputy
assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, to testify during a
hearing on the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, on Capitol
Hill, November 13, 2019. #
Jim Lo
Scalzo / Pool via Reuters
An Iraqi demonstrator takes part in ongoing anti-government protests in Baghdad on November 1, 2019. (Ahmed Jadallah / Reuters)
An Iraqi
demonstrator takes part in ongoing anti-government protests in Baghdad on
November 1, 2019. Beginning in October, frustrated Iraqis took to the streets
to voice their anger at years of government corruption, high rates of
unemployment, poor services, and economic stagnation. The response from Iraqi
authorities was particularly violent, resulting in more than 400 deaths. The
demonstrations continue, despite the announced resignation of Prime Minister
Adil Abdul-Mahdi. #
Tattoo artist Makkala Rose creates dramatic botanical designs on
her clients’ skin, incorporating richly toned flower blossoms, unctuous fruits,
and life-like animal portraits. One recent commission involved completely
covering a client’s back with a chiaroscuro “painting” featuring three burning
candles, reflective glass and crystals, piles of ripe fruit, and a hanging bat
on an inky black background.
Rose’s first love was painting, the
artist tells Colossal. “One of my first memories was smearing bright purple
paint from the pot onto a fresh sheet of paper stuck to an easel, and my love
and fascination with art and creating has never ended.” Now that Rose spends
most of her time tattooing, her background as a painter has come into dialogue
with her ink work. “The feel and the mood brought through by my color palette
and my style of tattooing is influenced by the way I like to paint and now vice
versa as I spend a lot more time tattooing, they lend interestingly to each
other,” says Rose.
The artist also has a strong
personal connection to flowers and gardens (Rose tells Colossal that floristry
would be her backup career), and she seeks to imbue her tattoo work with the
joy that blossoms bring her. She spends time perusing different bouquet
designs, photographing flowers in public gardens, and researching new plants
and flowers to expand her repertoire, though peonies and blackberries are
perennial favorites.
To create her most recent backpiece,
shown above, Rose explains that she personally collected all the materials for
the composition, from individual flowers to pitchers and crystals. She then
arranged everything in a composition (minus the bat) and worked with a friend
to take documentation photos in preparation for the tattoo design.
Rose hails from New Zealand, and
travels frequently for her tattoo work, most often across the U.S., U.K., and
New Zealand. See more of her designs on Instagram.
Rose is usually booked several months out, but you can find out where she’ll be
next on her website.
If you enjoy Rose’s designs, also check out Esther Garcia’s inkwork.
Organize by Linda Leonard-Nevels (School
Library Media Specialist), Malcolm X Shabazz High School, and Ms. Bongiovanni
(English IV, 2014-2015) Newark, New Jersey, December 2014
Finished artwork, after the
written comments by Ing-On Vibulbhan-Watts on Friday, January 30, 2015
Link to Finished artwork of
Malcolm X Shabazz High School’s Students’ comments, poster 2, on “What does
Peace mean to you?” page:
Impeachment is a rare event in
American politics. Amid the past few weeks of public hearings, we have wondered
how this episode compares to previous instances of impeachment. Amna Nawaz
spoke with three historians, each focused on a former president who had to
grapple with that threat: Peter Baker on Bill Clinton, John Naftali on Richard
Nixon and Brenda Wineapple on Andrew Johnson. Stream your PBS favorites with
the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
By 2050 there will be more plastic
than fish in the oceans. It’s an environmental crisis that’s been in the making
for nearly 70 years. Plastic pollution is now considered one of the largest
environmental threats facing humans and animals globally. In “The Plastic
Problem: PBS NewsHour Presents”, Amna Nawaz and her PBS NewsHour colleagues
look at this now ubiquitous material and how it’s impacting the world, why it’s
become so prevalent, what’s being done to mitigate its use, and what potential
alternatives or solutions are out there. This hour-long program travels from
Boston to Seattle, Costa Rica to Easter Island to bring the global scale of the
problem to light. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Alejandro Durán uses art to
spotlight the ongoing destruction of our oceans’ ecosystems. In this
breathtaking talk, he shows how he meticulously organizes and reuses plastic
waste from around the world that washes up on shores — everything from water
bottles to prosthetic legs — to create vivid, environmental artworks that may
leave you mesmerized and shocked.
This talk was presented at “We the
Future,” a special event in partnership with the Skoll Foundation and the United
Nations Foundation.
About the speaker
Alejandro Durán · Multimedia artist
Alejandro Durán collects the
international trash washing up on the Caribbean coast of Mexico, transforming
it into aesthetic yet disquieting artworks that wake us up to the threat of
plastic pollution.
About TED Salon
TED Salons welcome an intimate
audience for an afternoon or evening of highly-curated TED Talks revolving
around a globally relevant theme. A condensed version of a TED flagship
conference, they are distinct in their brevity, opportunities for conversation,
and heightened interaction between the speaker and audience.
47,289 views
We the Future | September 2019
We’ve all been told that we should
recycle plastic bottles and containers. But what actually happens to the
plastic if we just throw it away? Emma Bryce traces the life cycles of three
different plastic bottles, shedding light on the dangers these disposables
present to our world. [Directed by Sharon Colman, narrated by Addison Anderson,
music by Peter Gosling].
Meet the educator
Emma Bryce · Educator
About TED-Ed
TED-Ed Original lessons feature the
words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators.
Exposing Jeffrey Epstein’s international sex
trafficking ring | 60 Minutes Australia
The Jeffrey Epstein scandal – Tara
Brown reports how a New York billionaire masterminded an international sex
trafficking ring of young women, and why wealthy and powerful men, including
HRH Prince Andrew, are now implicated in the saga. Subscribe here: https://9Soci.al/chmP50wA97J
Full Episodes here https://9Soci.al/sImy50wNiXL
WATCH more of 60 Minutes Australia: https://www.60minutes.com.au
LIKE 60 Minutes Australia on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/60Minutes9
FOLLOW 60 Minutes Australia on Twitter: https://twitter.com/60Mins
FOLLOW 60 Minutes Australia on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/60minutes9
For forty years, 60 Minutes have been telling Australians the world’s greatest
stories. Tales that changed history, our nation and our lives. Reporters Liz
Hayes, Allison Langdon, Tara Brown, Charles Wooley, Liam Bartlett and Sarah Abo
look past the headlines because there is always a bigger picture. Sundays are
for 60 Minutes. #60MinutesAustralia
Homelessness, hunger and shame:
poverty is rampant in the richest country in the world. Over 40 million people
in the United States live below the poverty line, twice as many as it was fifty
years ago. It can happen very quickly. Many people in the United States fall
through the social safety net. In the structurally weak mining region of the
Appalachians, it has become almost normal for people to go shopping with food
stamps. And those who lose their home often have no choice but to live in a car.
There are so many homeless people in Los Angeles that relief organizations have
started to build small wooden huts to provide them with a roof over their heads.
The number of homeless children has also risen dramatically, reaching 1.5
million, three times more than during the Great Depression the 1930s. A
documentary about the fate of the poor in the United States today. We closed
the commentary section because of too many inapproriate comments.
——————————————————————– DW
Documentary gives you knowledge beyond the headlines. Watch high-class
documentaries from German broadcasters and international production companies.
Meet intriguing people, travel to distant lands, get a look behind the
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and global events. Subscribe and explore the world around you with DW
Documentary. Subscribe to DW Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW39… Our other YouTube channels: DW Documental (Spanish): https://www.youtube.com/dwdocumental DW Documentary ??????? ?? ?????: (Arabic): https://www.youtube.com/dwdocarabia For more documentaries visit also: https://www.facebook.com/dw.stories DW netiquette policy: https://p.dw.com/p/MF1G
As the year comes to a close, it’s
time to take a look at some of the most memorable events and images of 2019.
Events covered in this essay (the last of a three-part photo summary of the
year) include pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, anti-government
protests in Chile and Iraq, a toxic sky over New Delhi, an all-female team of
spacewalkers, a planned “storming” of Area 51, the aftermath of Hurricane
Dorian, and much more. See also “Top 25 News Photos of 2019” and “2019 in Photos: Part 1” and “2019 in Photos: Part 2.” The series comprises 120
images in all.
Hints: View this page full screen. Skip to the next and previous photo
by typing j/k or ?/?.
Police in riot gear move through a cloud of tear gas as they detain a protester at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, in Hong Kong, on November 18, 2019. (Ng Han Guan / AP)
Police in
riot gear move through a cloud of tear gas as they detain a protester at Hong
Kong Polytechnic University, in Hong Kong, on November 18, 2019. #
Ng Han Guan
/ AP
This photo provided by NASA shows the eye of Hurricane Dorian, as seen from the International Space Station on September 2, 2019. (Nick Hague / NASA via AP)
This photo
provided by NASA shows the eye of Hurricane Dorian, as seen from the International
Space Station on September 2, 2019. #
Nick Hague /
NASA via AP
Damage in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian on the Great Abaco island town of Marsh Harbour, Bahamas, September 2, 2019. Picture taken September 2, 2019. REUTERS/Dante Carrer TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY – RC1F32CE7750
Men survey
damage in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian on the Great Abaco island town of
Marsh Harbour, Bahamas, on September 2, 2019. #
Dante Carrer
/ Reuters
GOLD COAST, AUSTRALIA – SEPTEMBER 05: BMX rider Logan Martin rides at Elanora Skatepark on September 05, 2019 in Gold Coast, Australia. (Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)
BMX rider
Logan Martin rides at Elanora Skatepark on September 5, 2019, in Gold Coast,
Australia. #
Chris Hyde /
Getty
WOODSTOCK, ENGLAND – SEPTEMBER 12: (EDITORS NOTE: Retransmission of 1174135592 with alternate crop) “Novecento”, a taxidermy horse suspended from the ceiling, created by artist Maurizio Cattelan, is seen at Blenheim Palace on September 12, 2019 in Woodstock, England. The Italian artist is known as the prankster of the art world. His most notable piece being “America” a solid gold usable toilet which had art lovers queuing to use when it was shown at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
“Novecento,”
a taxidermied horse suspended from the ceiling, created by artist Maurizio
Cattelan, is seen at Blenheim Palace on September 12, 2019, in Woodstock,
England. #
Leon Neal /
Getty
CHICHESTER, ENGLAND – SEPTEMBER 15: 18 month-old Georgia Ricketts sits in a 1934 ERA R3A once driven by the famous racing driver Raymond Mays, which her father maintains and looks after on day three of the Goodwood Revival Festival at Goodwood on September 15, 2019 in Chichester, England. Thousands of classic car enthusiasts and fans of all things vintage have attended this year’s festival, celebrating the styles and cars of decades gone, with visitors wearing period dress from the 1940’s to 1960’s. (Photo by Kiran Ridley/Getty Images)
18-month-old
Georgia Ricketts sits in her father’s 1934 ERA R3A—once driven by the famous
racing driver Raymond Mays—on day three of the Goodwood Revival Festival in
Chichester, England, on September 15, 2019. #
Kiran Ridley
/ Getty
A man poses as if he is going to “Naruto run” at an entrance to Area 51 as an influx of tourists responding to a call to ‘storm’ Area 51, a secretive U.S. military base believed by UFO enthusiasts to hold government secrets about extra-terrestrials, is expected in Rachel, Nevada, U.S. September 20, 2019. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart – RC14E0DF0BA0
A man poses
as if he is going to “Naruto run” at an entrance to Area 51 as an
influx of tourists responded to a call to “storm” Area 51, a
secretive U.S. military base believed by UFO enthusiasts to hold government
secrets about extra-terrestrials, in Rachel, Nevada, on September 20, 2019.
While millions showed interest in the event posted on social media, fewer than
200 people showed up, and, according to reports, none made their way on to the
base. #
Jim Urquhart
/ Reuters
People run as Haiti’s Senator Jean Marie Ralph Fethiere (PHTK) fires a gun in the air, injuring Chery Dieu-Nalio, a photographer for Associated Press, while facing opposition supporters in the parking lot of the Haitian Parliament and Senate, as the government attempted to confirm the appointment of nominated Prime Minister Fritz William Michel, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti September 23, 2019. REUTERS/Andres Martinez Casares TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY – RC1B2F462E20
People run
as Haiti’s Senator Jean Marie Ralph Féthière fires a gun in the air, injuring
Chery Dieu-Nalio, a photographer for the Associated Press, while facing
opposition supporters in the parking lot of the Haitian Parliament and Senate,
as the government attempted to confirm the appointment of nominated Prime
Minister Fritz William Michel, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on September 23, 2019.
#
Andres
Martinez Casares / Reuters
LONDON, ENGLAND – SEPTEMBER 25: Dame Helen Mirren attends the Premiere Screening of new Sky Atlantic drama “Catherine The Great” at The Curzon Mayfair on September 25, 2019 in London, England. (Photo by David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images for Sky)
Dame Helen
Mirren is carried as she attends the premiere screening of the new drama Catherine
the Great at The Curzon Mayfair in London, England, on September 25, 2019. #
David M.
Benett / Getty for Sky
A frog is pictured on a lotus leaf in a pond after rain in Lalitpur, Nepal September 26, 2019. REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY – RC1CD5467020
A frog is pictured
on a lotus leaf in a pond after rain in Lalitpur, Nepal, on September 26, 2019.
#
Navesh
Chitrakar / Reuters
As seen from the International Space Station (ISS), the second stage of the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft deploys shortly after the rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on September 25, 2019. The Russian rocket was carrying the U.S. astronaut Jessica Meir, the Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka, and the United Arab Emirates astronaut Hazzaa Ali Almansoori to the ISS. (NASA)
As seen from
the International Space Station (ISS), the second stage of the Soyuz MS-15
spacecraft deploys shortly after the rocket launched from the Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on September 25, 2019. The Russian rocket was carrying
the U.S. astronaut Jessica Meir, the Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka, and the
United Arab Emirates astronaut Hazzaa Ali Almansoori to the ISS. #
NASA
A Ukrainian serviceman fires a heavy machine gun during combat with Russian-backed separatists on the front line near Gorlivka, Donetsk region, on September 28, 2019. (Anatolii Stepanov / AFP / Getty)
A Ukrainian
serviceman fires a heavy machine gun during combat with Russian-backed
separatists on the front line near Gorlivka, Donetsk region, on September 28,
2019. #
Anatolii
Stepanov / AFP / Getty
Militia members march in formation past Tiananmen Square during the military parade marking the 70th founding anniversary of People’s Republic of China, on its National Day in Beijing, China October 1, 2019. REUTERS/Thomas Peter – RC131C36CE50
Militia
members march in formation past Tiananmen Square during the military parade
marking the 70th founding anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, on its
National Day in Beijing, China, on October 1, 2019. #
Thomas Peter
/ Reuters
Botham Jean’s younger brother Brandt Jean hugs former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger after delivering his impact statement to her following her 10-year prison sentence for murder at the Frank Crowley Courts Building in Dallas, Texas, U.S. October 2, 2019. Tom Fox/Pool via REUTERS MANDATORY CREDIT TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY – RC12CC20A990
Botham
Jean’s younger brother, Brandt Jean, hugs former Dallas police officer Amber
Guyger after delivering his impact statement to her following her 10-year
prison sentence for the murder of Botham Jean, at the Frank Crowley Courts
Building in Dallas, Texas, on October 2, 2019. #
Tom Fox /
Pool via Reuters
Mounted police advance on demonstrators protesting the president near the government palace in Quito, Ecuador, on October 3, 2019. (Dolores Ochoa / AP)
Mounted
police advance on demonstrators protesting against President Lenín Moreno, near
the government palace in Quito, Ecuador, on October 3, 2019. #
Dolores
Ochoa / AP
Police motorcycles lead a procession ahead of the casket carrying New York City Police Department officer Brian Mulkeen from his funeral service at the Sacred Heart Church in Monroe, New York, on October 4, 2019. Mulkeen was killed while making an arrest, when another police officer inadvertently shot him. (Mike Segar / Reuters)
Police
motorcycles lead a procession ahead of the casket carrying New York City Police
Department officer Brian Mulkeen from his funeral service at the Sacred Heart
Church in Monroe, New York, on October 4, 2019. Mulkeen was killed while making
an arrest, when another police officer inadvertently shot him. #
Mike Segar /
Reuters
Jerry Rowe uses a garden hose to save his home amid swirling embers on Beaufait Avenue from the Saddleridge fire in Granada Hills, California, on October 11, 2019. (Michael Owen Baker / AP)
Jerry Rowe
uses a garden hose to save his home, amid swirling embers on Beaufait Avenue,
from the Saddleridge fire in Granada Hills, California, on October 11, 2019. #
Michael Owen
Baker / AP
A masked Kashmiri man with his head covered with barbed wire attends a protest after Friday prayers during restrictions following the scrapping of the special constitutional status for Kashmir by the Indian government, in Srinagar, October 11, 2019. REUTERS/Danish Ismail – RC1B5A586660
A masked
Kashmiri man with his head covered with barbed wire attends a protest after
Friday prayers during restrictions following the scrapping of the special
constitutional status for Kashmir by the Indian government, in Srinagar, on
October 11, 2019. #
Danish
Ismail / Reuters
WESTERVILLE, OHIO – OCTOBER 15: Democratic presidential candidates (L-R) Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), billionaire Tom Steyer, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former tech executive Andrew Yang, former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and former housing secretary Julian Castro at the start of the Democratic Presidential Debate at Otterbein University on October 15, 2019 in Westerville, Ohio. A record 12 presidential hopefuls are participating in the debate hosted by CNN and The New York Times. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Democratic
presidential candidates, from left: Representative Tulsi Gabbard, billionaire
Tom Steyer, Senator Cory Booker, Senator Kamala Harris, Senator Bernie Sanders,
former Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren, South Bend, Indiana,
Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former tech executive Andrew Yang, former Representative
Beto O’Rourke, Senator Amy Klobuchar, and former Housing Secretary Julian
Castro, at the start of the Democratic Presidential Debate at Otterbein
University in Westerville, Ohio, on October 15, 2019. #
Chip
Somodevilla / Getty
A hiker walks in the Zillertal Alps during an autumn day near the village of Ginzling, Austria, October 15, 2019. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner – RC128ACBAEE0
A hiker
walks in the Zillertal Alps during an autumn day near the village of Ginzling,
Austria, on October 15, 2019. #
Lisi Niesner
/ Reuters
Trains in a Shinkansen bullet-train rail yard in Nagano, Japan, sit in floodwater due to heavy rains caused by Hagibis on October 13, 2019. (Kyodo / Reuters)
Trains sit
in floodwater in a Shinkansen bullet-train rail yard in Nagano, Japan, due to
heavy rains caused by Typhoon Hagibis on October 13, 2019. #
Kyodo /
Reuters
President Donald J. Trump meets with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congressional leadership Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2019, in the Cabinet Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
President
Donald J. Trump meets with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and congressional
leadership on October 16, 2019, in the Cabinet Room of the White House. #
Shealah
Craighead / The White House
In this photo released by NASA on Thursday, Oct. 17, 2019, U.S. astronauts Jessica Meir, left, and Christina Koch pose for a photo in the International Space Station. On Friday, Oct. 18, 2019, the two are scheduled to perform a spacewalk to replace a broken battery charger. (NASA via AP)
U.S.
astronauts Jessica Meir, left, and Christina Koch pose for a photo in the
International Space Station on October 17, 2019. The two performed a spacewalk
the following day to replace a broken battery charger—the first all-female
spacewalk in history. #
NASA via AP
A woman covers her face as she stands along the side of a road on the outskirts of the town of Tal Tamr, near the Syrian Kurdish town of Ras al-Ain, along the border with Turkey in the northeastern Hassakeh province, on October 16, 2019, with smoke from tire fires billowing in the background. The fires were set to decrease visibility for Turkish warplanes that are part of operation “Peace Spring.” (Delil Souleiman / AFP via Getty)
A woman
covers her face as she stands along the side of a road on the outskirts of the
town of Tal Tamr, near the Syrian Kurdish town of Ras al-Ain, along the border
with Turkey, on October 16, 2019, with smoke from tire fires billowing in the
background. The fires were set to decrease visibility for Turkish warplanes
that were part of the cross-border operation “Peace Spring,” aimed at
removing Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, after the United States withdrew
troops from the region. #
Delil
Souleiman / AFP / Getty
The surfers Leina Decker (left), Rory Chalupnik (center), and Reid Decker await waves while dressed as mariachi musicians during the 16th Annual Blackies Halloween Surf event in Newport Beach, California, on October 26, 2019. (Frederic J. Brown / AFP / Getty)
Surfers
Leina Decker (left), Rory Chalupnik (center), and Reid Decker await waves while
dressed as mariachi musicians during the 16th Annual Blackies Halloween Surf
event in Newport Beach, California, on October 26, 2019. #
Frederic J.
Brown / AFP / Getty
The flag-draped casket of late U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings is carried through National Statuary Hall during a memorial service at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on October 24, 2019. (Al Drago / Reuters)
The
flag-draped casket of late U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings is carried
through National Statuary Hall during a memorial service at the U.S. Capitol in
Washington, D.C., on October 24, 2019. #
Al Drago /
Pool via Reuters
TOPSHOT – In this photo taken on October 29, 2019, a wild elephant stops a car on a road at Khao Yai National Park in Thailand’s Nakhon Ratchasima province. – The driver escaped unhurt with his car slightly damaged. (Photo by Pratya CHUTIPASKUL / AFP) (Photo by PRATYA CHUTIPASKUL/AFP via Getty Images)
A wild
elephant stops a car on a road at Khao Yai National Park in Thailand’s Nakhon
Ratchasima province on October 29, 2019. The driver escaped unhurt with his car
slightly damaged. #
Pratya
Chutipaskul / AFP / Getty
TOPSHOT – Men, suspected of being affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) group, gather in a prison cell in the northeastern Syrian city of Hasakeh on October 26, 2019. – Kurdish sources say around 12,000 IS fighters including Syrians, Iraqis as well as foreigners from 54 countries are being held in Kurdish-run prisons in northern Syria. (Photo by FADEL SENNA / AFP) (Photo by FADEL SENNA/AFP via Getty Images)
Men,
suspected of being affiliated with the Islamic State group, gather in a prison
cell in the northeastern Syrian city of Hasakeh on October 26, 2019. Kurdish
sources said around 12,000 IS fighters including Syrians, Iraqis as well as
foreigners from 54 countries are being held in Kurdish-run prisons in northern
Syria. #
Fadel Senna
/ AFP / Getty
TOPSHOT – Iraqi students pose for selfies with a member of the security forces during ongoing anti-government protests in the central city of Diwaniyah on October 31, 2019. – Iraq’s leaders scrambled to produce a solution to mounting protests demanding the ouster of Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi that have so far left more than 250 dead. Demonstrations first erupted on October 1 over corruption and unemployment and have since ballooned, with protesters now insisting on a government overhaul. (Photo by Haidar HAMDANI / AFP) (Photo by HAIDAR HAMDANI/AFP via Getty Images)
Iraqi
students pose for selfies with a member of the security forces during ongoing
anti-government protests in the central city of Diwaniyah on October 31, 2019.
Demonstrations first erupted on October 1 over corruption and unemployment and
ballooned, with protesters insisting on a government overhaul. #
Haidar
Hamdani / AFP / Getty
A demonstrator carries an Iraqi flag during ongoing anti-government protests in Baghdad, Iraq, on November 4, 2019. (Thaier Al-Sudani / Reuters)
A
demonstrator carries an Iraqi flag during ongoing anti-government protests in
Baghdad, Iraq, on November 4, 2019. #
Thaier
Al-Sudani / Reuters
Hindu women worship the sun god in the polluted waters of the river Yamuna during the Hindu religious festival of Chhath Puja in New Delhi, India, November 3, 2019. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY – RC13AD185C00
Women
worship the sun god in the polluted waters of the Yamuna river during the Hindu
festival of Chhath Puja in New Delhi on November 3, 2019. #
Adnan Abidi
/ Reuters
TOPSHOT – Members of the Lebaron family mourn while they watch the burned car where part of the nine murdered members of the family were killed and burned during an gunmen ambush on Bavispe, Sonora mountains, Mexico, on November 5, 2019. – US President Donald Trump offered Tuesday to help Mexico “wage war” on its cartels after three women and six children from an American Mormon community were murdered in an area notorious for drug traffickers. (Photo by Herika MARTINEZ / AFP) / The erroneous mention[s] appearing in the metadata of this photo by Herika MARTINEZ has been modified in AFP systems in the following manner: [AFP PHOTO / Herika MARTINEZ ] instead of [AFP PHOTO / STR ]. Please immediately remove the erroneous mention[s] from all your online services and delete it (them) from your servers. If you have been authorized by AFP to distribute it (them) to third parties, please ensure that the same actions are carried out by them. Failure to promptly comply with these instructions will entail liability on your part for any continued or post notification usage. Therefore we thank you very much for all your attention and prompt action. We are sorry for the inconvenience this notification may cause and remain at your disposal for any further information you may require. (Photo by HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty Images)
Members of
the LeBaron family mourn while they look at the burned car where part of the nine
murdered members of the family were killed and burned during an ambush by
gunmen in Bavispe, Sonora mountains, Mexico, on November 5, 2019. U.S.
President Donald Trump offered to help Mexico “wage war” on its
cartels after three women and six children from an American Mormon community
were murdered in an area notorious for drug traffickers. #
Herika
Martinez / AFP / Getty
A demonstrator holds a Chilean flag near a riot police officer and vehicle amid laser beams during a protest against Chile’s government in Santiago, Chile, on November 12, 2019. (Ivan Alvarado / Reuters0
A
demonstrator holds a Chilean flag near a riot police officer and vehicle amid
laser beams during a protest against Chile’s government in Santiago, Chile, on
November 12, 2019. #
Ivan
Alvarado / Reuters
A policemen (left) screams after he was shot and wounded during an opposition demonstration commemorating the Battle of Vertieres Day, the last major battle of the Second War of Haitian Independence, and demanding the resignation of President Jovenel Moise, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on November 18, 2019. (Valerie Baeriswyl / AFP / Getty)
A policemen
(left) screams after he was shot and wounded during an opposition demonstration
commemorating the Battle of Vertieres Day, the last major battle of the Second
War of Haitian Independence, and demanding the resignation of President Jovenel
Moise, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on November 18, 2019. #
Valerie
Baeriswyl / AFP / Getty
Riot police detain two men in the Central district of Hong Kong on November 11, 2019. – A Hong Kong policeman shot a masked protester in the torso on November 11 morning, igniting clashes across the city and renewed fury towards the force as crowds took to the streets to block roads and hurl insults at officers. (Dale De La Rey / AFP / Getty)
Riot police
detain two men in the Central district of Hong Kong on November 11, 2019. A
Hong Kong policeman shot a masked protester in the torso on November 11,
igniting clashes across the city and renewed fury towards the force as crowds
took to the streets to block roads and hurl insults at officers. #
Dale De La
Rey / AFP / Getty
A protester prepares to fire an arrow during a confrontation with police at Hong Kong Polytechnic University on November 17, 2019. (Kin Cheung / AP)
A protester
prepares to fire an arrow during a confrontation with police at Hong Kong
Polytechnic University on November 17, 2019. #
Kin Cheung /
AP
TOPSHOT – Riot police are reached by a petrol bomb during clashes with demonstrators protesting against the government in Santiago on November 22, 2019. – Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said on Thursday that police may have broken protocols in responding to a month of protests, and prosecutors will investigate whether they violated human rights. (Photo by JAVIER TORRES / AFP) (Photo by JAVIER TORRES/AFP via Getty Images)
Riot police
are struck by a petrol bomb during clashes with demonstrators protesting
against the government in Santiago on November 22, 2019. #
Javier
Torres / AFP / Getty
A man dressed as the Pope is seen as well-wishers attend the arrival of Pope Francis in Bangkok, Thailand, on November 20, 2019. (Ann Wang / Reuters)
A man
dressed as the Pope is seen as well-wishers attend the arrival of Pope Francis
in Bangkok, Thailand, on November 20, 2019. #
Ann Wang /
Reuters
Gordon Sondland, the U.S ambassador to the European Union, arrives for testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on November 20, 2019. The committee heard testimony during the fourth day of open hearings in the impeachment inquiry against U.S. President Donald Trump, whom House Democrats say held back U.S. military aid for Ukraine while demanding it investigate his political rivals. (Win McNamee / Getty)
Gordon
Sondland, the U.S ambassador to the European Union, arrives for testimony
before the House Intelligence Committee in the Longworth House Office Building
on Capitol Hill in Washington, District of Columbia, on November 20, 2019. The
committee heard testimony during the fourth day of open hearings in the
impeachment inquiry against U.S. President Donald Trump, whom House Democrats
say held back U.S. military aid for Ukraine while demanding it investigate his
political rivals. #
Win McNamee
/ Getty
President Trump holds what appears to be a prepared statement and handwritten notes after watching testimony by Ambassador Gordon Sondland as he speaks to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House on November 20, 2019. (Erin Scott / Reuters)
President
Trump holds what appears to be a prepared statement and handwritten notes after
watching testimony by Ambassador Gordon Sondland as he speaks to reporters on
the South Lawn of the White House on November 20, 2019. #
Erin Scott /
Reuters
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hear what you think about this article. Submit
a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.
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PBS News: November 26 – December 1, 2019, How innovation and small steps can
help us solve The Plastic Problem, and Largest slave revolt in U.S. history
lives on in reenactment,
On this edition for Sunday, December
1, severe weather disrupts holiday travel across the U.S., and on World AIDS
Day, how inequality impacts those living with HIV. Also, how Mac DeMarco is
harnessing the internet to thrive as an indie artist. Alison Stewart anchors
from New York. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG
Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
PBS NewsHour Weekend full episode November 30, 2019
On this edition for Saturday,
November 30, the latest on the London Bridge attack, Illinois schools placed
thousands of children in isolation rooms, and New York’s Mohawk tribe and their
fight to restore their endangered language. Alison Stewart anchors from New
York. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Thursday on the NewsHour, President
Trump made a Thanksgiving trip to Afghanistan, where he served troops a holiday
dinner and met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Plus: The history of
impeachment in America, how to reduce food waste, a crackdown on protests in
Iran, the outlook for long-haul truckers and former students of viral sensation
Flossie Lewis express their thanks to her. WATCH TODAY’S SEGMENTS: In
Afghanistan, Trump says Taliban talks have restarted https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv2j-… News Wrap: Dozens more protesters killed in Iraqi violence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qjwrr… A look back at presidential impeachment in U.S. history https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2pRV… How Americans can change their mindset about wasting food https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxl0u… Behind the protests and brutal government crackdown in Iran
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOhYJ… Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
On Wednesday night, PBS will air a
one-hour special report, “The Plastic Problem,” that examines how our global
dependence on plastic has created one of the biggest environmental threats to
our planet. Amna Nawaz hosts the program, and she joins Judy Woodruff to
discuss how we consume and discard plastic, where it is ending up and what
corporations and consumers are doing to address the problem. Stream your PBS
favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
From left to right: Adelene, Frankie, Josephat, Brenda, and
Candido in the 2007 Toyota Sienna that they lived in for close to a year
November
26, 2019
3 kids. 2 paychecks. No home.
South of San Francisco, in a fertile corner of California
that feeds much of the country, working families are sleeping in shelters
and parking lots.
By
Brian Goldstone
Photographs by Alessandra Sanguinetti
Frankie’s morning started before the sun came up, as the
steadily increasing volume of his parents’ phone alarm, coming from somewhere
near the dashboard, jolted the 8-year-old awake. His dad, Candido, and
6-year-old brother, Josephat, had begun to stir in the cramped rear of the
minivan, emerging from a tangle of blankets, towels, pillows, and stuffed
animals. His mom, Brenda, was in the driver’s seat, which was reclined as far
back as it could go; his baby sister, Adelene, who was 3, was splayed out
awkwardly on the seat beside her. As for Frankie, he was in his usual spot:
nestled on the floorboard between the front seats and middle row, his skinny
4-foot frame hidden in a furry green-and-brown sleeping bag meant to look like
a grizzly bear.
For almost nine months, the family had been living out of
their Toyota Sienna in various fields and parking lots throughout Salinas, the
industrial and economic center of Monterey County. In this part of the country,
there was nothing especially dramatic or exceptional about their plight, or the
circumstances that led them to be without a roof over their heads. Frankie’s
parents were well aware of the worsening housing crisis that had dragged tens
of thousands of Californians into a similar fate. But still, Candido said, it
sometimes felt as though they were the only ones out there.
Finding a place to park the van was harder than expected. At
first, the family tried the parking lot of a Food 4 Less grocery store. But the
following morning, an employee warned them not to return; a neighborhood gang,
he explained, controlled the area and had been threatening homeless people. He
said they’d recently slashed someone’s tires. The family drove to a nearby
strawberry farm, which proved more hospitable. In exchange for doing chores
around the property, such as cleaning the bathrooms and emptying the trash, the
farm’s owner would fill up their gas tank. But eventually other families, in
their own cars and SUVs, began showing up, and it became too much. They’d have
to go somewhere else, the owner said.
Now they were in the parking lot of Natividad Medical
Center, just outside the emergency room. The lot was well lit, and there were
bathrooms in the ER waiting room, open 24 hours. The hospital staff was mostly
welcoming. At night, however, after everyone fell asleep, Candido had been
noticing the tiny flicker of a lighter in a nearby pickup truck and the profile
of an older man. Candido kept the van’s dome light on and made sure its doors
were locked.
As parents, Candido and Brenda believed the most important
thing was to project confidence; their kids needed to see that they had a plan.
The couple tried to avoid worrying about how long they’d be in the van, or
where they might go next, but it was impossible to think about anything else.
There were bouts of cursing and storming off and feeling that one more minute
in the vehicle, packed with the entirety of their possessions, would drive them
all insane. There were weekend excursions to Target for little toys and treats,
bought with money they couldn’t spare. When temperatures dropped, it was a
terrible calculus: bundle up as best they could, the kids shivering and
complaining, or run the van’s heat all night and use up precious gas. Or, if
there were any rooms available, they could spend up to a couple hundred dollars
a night at the Best 5 Motel or Good Nite Inn?—?making it that much less likely
that they’d save enough to get out of the van entirely.
Mornings were the hardest. Everyone was achy, tired from a
bad night’s sleep, and on this morning, too, it was all they could do to keep
to their routine. Brenda and Candido insisted on maintaining a semblance of
order. “We’re not like some people,” Candido would tell the kids. “We wash our
clothes. We don’t pee outside. We keep ourselves clean.” In the hospital
bathroom, while Candido got ready to go to work and Brenda stayed behind with
Adelene, Frankie helped wash and dress Josephat, brushing his brother’s teeth,
then his own. Breakfast was whatever Pop-Tarts or granola bars were left over
from the food bank. Finally, they straightened up the van, pulled the seats
back into position, and put on their seat belts, Adelene in her car seat,
Frankie and Josephat in their boosters. They drove the 15 or so minutes into
town, fusing with the early traffic, indistinguishable from all the other
families starting their day.
When the van stopped, the boys hopped out. They went around
to the trunk, grabbed their backpacks off the built-in clothing hooks, hugged
their parents, and walked through the front gate of their
elementary school.
For more information please visit
the following link:
TED
Talks: Cathy Mulzer – The incredible
chemistry powering your smart phone
Ever wondered how your smartphone
works? Take a journey down to the atomic level with scientist Cathy Mulzer, who
reveals how almost every component of our high-powered devices exists thanks to
chemists — and not the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs that come to most people’s
minds. As she puts it: “Chemistry is the hero of electronic
communications.”
This talk was presented at a TED Institute
event given in partnership with DuPont. TED editors featured it among our
selections on the home page. Read more about the TED Institute.
Every year, TED works with a group
of select companies and foundations to identify internal ideators, inventors,
connectors, and creators. Drawing on the same rigorous regimen that has
prepared speakers for the TED main stage, TED Institute works closely with each
partner, overseeing curation and providing intensive one-on-one talk
development to sharpen and fine tune ideas. The culmination is an event
produced, recorded, and hosted by TED, generating a growing library of valuable
TED Talks that can spur innovation and transform organizations.
TED Talks: Kim Preshoff – What’s a
smartphone madeof#t-286167
As of 2018, there are around 2.5
billion smartphone users in the world. If we broke open all the newest phones
and split them into their component parts, that would produce around 85,000 kg
of gold, 875,000 of silver, and 40,000,000 of copper. How did this precious
cache get into our phones–and can we reclaim it? Kim Preshoff investigates the
sustainability of phone production. [TED-Ed Animation by Compote Collective].
Meet the educator
Kim Preshoff · Educator
About TED-Ed
TED-Ed Original lessons feature the
words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators.
500 + Fish Identification Documentary by Pano4life
A few years ago I was stung by the
“Diving” virus. I quickly became an instructor and over time I was
able to accumulate more than 6000 dives mainly in Thailand, Indonesia,
Philippines and Malaysia. During these dives, I noticed how fragile the
ecosystems are. I came up with the idea of ??filming everything I could for
fear of not seeing it again one day. Of course, I could not take my camera for
each of these dives but I do it whenever I have the opportunity. Today we were
able to identify and filmed in full HD 500 different underwater species. This
documentary of 60 minutes retraces these different species with the scientific
description and the Latin name of each species. Our goal is to show the world
how precious the oceans are and full of life that unfortunately the humanity is
likely to endanger … We sometimes forget that the oceans provide us with more
than 60% of the oxygen we we need to live. Half of the photosynthesis and
removal of carbon dioxide takes place in the oceans. Marine species play a key
role in this regulation. It is therefore important to identify and protect
them. Unfortunately for humans, this protection is not a priority. On the
contrary, the human pressures on the oceans are increasing every day, the
impact is irreversible! Through this documentary, we hope to be able to arouse
interest on the various underwater species and their protection. We also say to
ourself that if our future generations also want to be able to contemplate the
beauty of our planet, we have to act quickly! If we continue like this, our
grandchildren will not even see a quarter of what you see in this documentary.
I would especially like to thank my partner and dive Buddy Lily Romero who
filmed and helped me editing this amazing video. As well as laurent Minsart for
some macro shots in Lembeh, Indonesia. Special Big Up to all those who
participated by loan or by far at this documentary, Dive Guide Local Boat
Captain. More Info or collab Lily Romero & Pierre Bijloos
www.lilyromero.com IG: LILYRYOGA IG: PANO4LIFE
The most common question I get asked
by my workshop students is ‘how do you get such sharp images?’. It’s actually
really simple. Basically, avoid movement of any kind while the shutter is open,
focus well and choose the right aperture for your creative vision. Mostly it’s
just plain old common sense with a couple of technical elements thrown in, so
if you want to learn how to get super sharp landscape photography images,
here’s my list of top tips.
Top
tips for sharper landscape photography
1
– Use a good tripod with a sturdy ball head and make sure everything is TIGHT
Seems obvious, but time and time
again I see students using decent tripods and they often don’t have everything clamped down tightly.
For example, the attachment that is screwed to the underside of your camera
should be as tight as you can get it, eventually it’ll work its way loose. Make
sure that ball head is completely locked down once you’ve composed your shot.
2
– While taking the shot, don’t place your hands on your tripod
The vibrations of your hands will
blur the shot. When that shutter opens, your hands should be nowhere near the
camera.
3
– Use the 2 second timer or a remote shutter release
This insures that the shutter won’t
open until you are completely hands free.
4
– Cheap lenses will defocus while you rotate your circular polarizer
This is another one that seems
obvious but I’ve seen it happen a lot. Let’s say you’ve achieved perfect focus
on your landscape composition and now you’d like to rotate the polarizer
which is attached to your perfectly focused lens. Guess what, as you rotate that filter, the lens is now
losing its focus because of the movement and pressure you’re exerting on the
filter. This rarely happens with high end lenses but I’ve seen it happen a lot
with cheaper kit lenses that are poorly engineered. When this happens simply
remember to refocus before hitting the shutter.
5
– Enable the mirror lock-up if you have a DLSR
Using mirror lock-up ensures that the mechanical shock induced by the cameras
mirror mechanism has dissipated by the time the shutter opens.
6
– Remove your camera strap
In windy situations it will act like
a sail and induce vibration.
7
– Add some weight to your tripod’s central column
If the conditions are windy, it will
also help reduce vibration.
8
– Place a small but heavy bean bag on your camera and lens
Do this just before taking the shot
to further eliminate movement from shutter shock.
9
– Choose a Mid-range to Narrow Aperture
This one should be an article in
itself but for now it’s important to understand that if you want corner to
corner focus in your landscape images you’ll need to select
an aperture that gives you a wide depth of
field. Using f/2.8 is pointless, so pick an aperture like f/11 or f/16
depending on how close you are to your foreground subjects. Be aware however
that the narrower the aperture (larger number like f/22) the less sharp your
image will be due to light diffraction so experiment with your lenses to
discover their sweet spot for wide depth of field.
Side Note: Shallow depth of field in landscapes can be beautiful when
done well, in which case you’ll need a wide aperture like f/2.8 and ideally a
lens that delivers beautiful bokeh – most super wide angle lenses don’t do
bokeh well.
10
– Focus In the Distance
Don’t focus on the object closest to
you. Pick an object in the middle distance that has a clear contrasting line
and focus on that. You could focus to infinity but beware that most of the wide
angle lenses I’ve used actually focus beyond infinity so I often have to focus
to infinity and then carefully rotate the focus wheel back so that it’s just
slightly before the ‘infinity’ mark.
11
– Put Your Glasses On
If you need glasses in order to see
clearly and focus on things, it should go without saying that you might need to
put on your stylish and expensive bifocals in order to achieve clear focus in
your photography. Besides, everyone knows that glasses make you look cool and
more intelligent, so why not put them on?
12
– Use Live View or EVF magnification
If you have a DLSR with an optical
viewfinder I highly recommend that you use your cameras ‘Live View’ mode
and then magnify it to your point of interest and use your manual focus ring to
achieve sharp focus If your camera has an EVF (Electronic View Finder)
you can do the same thing while looking in the EVF. I actually prefer
this because you don’t get distracted by glare on the LCD or external light sources.
Either way, remember to disable auto focus if you decide to focus manually with
Live View.
I use every single one of these
techniques in my Vancouver Island photo workshops and I teach them to all of my
students. If you follow these tips every time you shoot landscapes, you’ll be
sure to get much sharper images. If you’ve got some of your own tricks and tips
for getting super sharp landscape images please leave a comment below and share
your knowledge.
Gavin Hardcastle is a fine art photographer, writer and instructor from BC, Canada. Become a better photographer today with his free photography guides and photography tutorials. You can learn from Gavin directly at his global photography workshops in some of the worlds most spectacular locations. Upgrade your post processing skills with his online video tutorials for Photoshop and Lightroom.
On November 9, 1989,
German officials decided to allow residents of Communist East Germany to cross over
and visit the Western, democratic half of the divided country. Though the
complex process of physically and ideologically reunifying the country took
about a year in total, November 9th is considered a landmark day. To celebrate
30 years since the Berlin Wall began to break down, artist Patrick
Shearn (previously) was commissioned to create a
large-scale installation that integrated the reflections and hopes of 30,000
people.
Visions in Motion was on view November 4th through 10th in front of Berlin’s
Brandenburg Gate, a location that had previously been a demarcation of
division. A statement from Poetic Kinetics explained, “the artwork’s
rectangular shape conjures the form of the wall; but instead of a heavy,
impenetrable border, the form takes flight.” The massive installation spanned
20,000 square feet and was comprised of 120,000 fabric streamers, a quarter of
which featured hand-written messages that were collected in the months leading
up to the display.
Shearn is a resident of Los Angeles,
Berlin’s sister city, and is renowned for his large-scale kinetic
installations, which he calls “Skynets”. Tying the German installation to its
sister city, the Los Angeles-area Wende Museum, which houses
Cold War artifacts, invited Los Angelenos to contribute messages to Visions
in Motion as well.
Shearn and his team at Poetic
Kinetics are prolific creators. You can explore much more of their archive on
the Poetic Kinetics website, and follow them on Instagram to keep up with their latest projects
around the world.
Shadow of Peace and La
Asociación de Barranquiteños de NJ Inc., Puerto Rican Festival in Newark on
August 11, 2012, organized by Carlos Maldonado Pastrana, President of La
Asociación de Barranquiteños de NJ. Finished artwork, after the
written comments by Ing-On Vibulbhan-Watts
Link to 6th Annual Art and
Music Fair Elwood Park Page:
It was time for the four-year-old
artist to relax and play.
I have a better chance
to learn human behavior and development from our grandson than our only
daughter when she was young. This was because
we were so busy with working and now we have more time to observe our
grandson’s interaction with other children, including his behavior as a baby
and his progress up to now.
For more information please visit
the following link:
Ing & John’s Street Art and
International Street Art-Part 7
Since first
collaborating in 2007, Spanish street art duo Pichi & Avo (previously) have created an intriguing blend of
traditional graffiti and renderings of mythological figures influenced by
ancient Greek sculpture. The precision, shading, and use of color is all that
more impressive considering each piece is painted only with spray paint. Pichi
& Avo open their first exhibition in Italy titled Urban IconoMythology
later this week at Basement Project Room. You can see more of their work here.
(via Illusion, Graff Crew, UrbaNNerding, I Support Street Art)
Oakland-based painter
Jessica Hess documents landscapes and built
environments in moments of transition. Combining open skies and lush plant life
with crumbling walls and frayed rebar, Hess finds equivalency in growth and
decay. The artist, who works in oil paint, shoots photos while exploring
abandoned locales, and uses these real-life references to build her carefully
framed worlds on canvas.
Hess graduated from Rhode Island
School of Design and has been exhibiting nationally for over 15 years. Her solo
show, The Chaos Aesthetic, is currently on view at Hashimoto Contemporary in San Francisco, and runs through May 25, 2019. You can
keep up with Hess’s impressive exhibition schedule, which includes four
additional shows this year on her website,
and see more of her work on Instagram.
For more information please visit
the following link:
Ing & John’s Street Art and
International Street Art-Part 8
Composition refers to the
arrangement of elements within the photo. And it’s often the difference between
a creative, compelling image, and an image that just falls flat.
In this article, I’m going to share
with you everything you need to know about bird photography composition. I’m
going to give you several tips that ensure you capture beautiful bird
photography compositions, without fail.
Sound good?
Let’s dive right in.
The
composition basics: Capturing a gorgeous bird photo
When you take a bird photo,
everything in the frame matters.
The bird. The position of the bird.
The position of the bird’s head. The background. Any elements behind the bird.
Any elements in front of the bird.
It’s all important.
Because the key to a gorgeous bird
photography compositions is keeping the shot focused on your main subject.
You want to make sure that the bird
stands out in the frame. You want to make sure everything else in the photo
emphasizes and enhances the bird.
So how do you do that?
A few simple ways, starting with:
Simplify
the entire composition to make the bird stand out
If your composition is chaotic, then
the viewer is going to get lost.
And that’s absolutely not what you
want.
Instead, you should aim to simplify
the composition as much as possible. The best compositions tend to include a bird
and a background. That’s it.
While it’s possible to create beautiful
shots by including additional birds or interesting features (e.g., shells,
flowers), I recommend avoiding that as much as possible. These mess up
compositions more often than they enhance them.
Also, in the interest of simplicity:
If there’s anything in the frame that’s distracting, get rid of it. So make
sure there are no branches behind the bird. Make sure there’s nothing in the
background that dominates the frame or draws the eye.
That’s how you’ll keep your bird
photography compositions beautiful.
And speaking of backgrounds:
Aim
for a uniform, simple background that makes the bird pop
If you want a beautiful bird
photography compositions, then you need a beautiful background.
What does this involve?
First, the best bird photography
backgrounds are simple. They’re also uniform.
Like this:
Notice how the background is a nice
uniform color.
It keeps the attention on the bird.
It doesn’t distract.
To create a background like this,
you want to start by ensuring a large separation between the bird and the
background. One trick is to get down low, on the bird’s level; this will cause
the ground behind the bird to fall away, creating a more distant background.
You should also make sure you use a
decently wide aperture, such as f/5.6 or f/6.3 (the particulars depend on the
size of your bird, because you don’t want to accidentally make parts of the
bird soft!).
Finally, you should ensure that the
background doesn’t include colorful elements that catch the eye. Before you
take a shot, look behind your bird, and ask yourself: Will anything in the
background dominate the frame? Will anything pull the viewer away from the
bird?
If the answer is “Yes,” then you
should consider moving slightly to the left or right so that you’re no longer
stuck with a distracting background.
Use
the rule of thirds to position the bird’s eye
Now that you know how to capture
beautiful backgrounds, it’s time to look at your main subject and how to
position it.
Generally speaking, you’ll have a
single bird in your photos. And you need to position this bird carefully.
You don’t want to put it smack-dab
in the middle of the frame. That’s a recipe for a boring, static composition.
Instead, I recommend you place the
bird so that its eye falls along a rule of thirds
power point.
What is the rule of thirds power
points?
They’re simply points that are a
third of the way into the frame, both vertically and horizontally.
The eye in this photo, for instance,
falls along a power point:
It’s a third of the way down, and a
third of the way from the left.
Now, the rule of thirds is misnamed;
it’s a guideline, not a hard-and-fast rule. But it is a great way to position
your bird and will ensure that the shot feels a lot more interesting.
So use the rule of thirds whenever
you can to position your bird within the frame.
Point
the bird into the frame to add movement
I’ve talked about positioning your
main subject using the rule of thirds, but there’s another aspect to
positioning that you should always, always consider:
The direction the bird is pointing.
You see, most bird photos have some empty space
in the frame.
And when they do…
…you want to point the bird into the
empty space, rather than away from it.
You see, by making sure the bird is
looking into the empty space, it adds a sense of completeness and a sense of
motion to the frame. The viewer’s eye follows the birds line of sight, and
everything feels satisfying.
Whereas if you point the bird out of
the frame, the whole shot feels tense. The viewer wants to know what’s outside
the frame, with no resolution in sight.
That’s why bird photographers love to point the bird into the frame. It’s far more satisfying,
and can turn the shot into something powerful.
Capture
the bird in a creative pose for increased interest
Now, when it comes to bird
photography, you can capture birds in a normal standing pose.
And that’ll get you some nice
photos.
But sometimes…
This isn’t enough.
If you want to create truly creative
bird photography, you need to go beyond the simple standing pose. And capture
the bird doing something interesting.
What counts as interesting?
For one, preening birds look really
interesting. They appear wonderfully tranquil as they clean their feathers.
And birds that are sleeping also
give off a sense of peace that I love.
You can also go for action shots:
Birds feeding, for instance, can create a lot of interest. You can capture
photos of birds that are about to catch food, are currently catching food, or
have just caught food. Think of a bird with a huge fish in its mouth.
It’s guaranteed to add interest.
Cool, right?
You can also go for shots of birds
fighting or, as is a common bird photography practice, shots of birds flying.
Photographing birds in flight can be a challenge, but a really rewarding one.
So whenever you’re able, don’t just
take a standard bird photo. Go beyond this.
Make something unique!
A
quick guide to amazing bird photography compositions: Conclusion
You should now have a sense of the best
ways to capture beautiful bird photography compositions.
And remember:
Getting amazing compositions isn’t
hard. You just have to use the tips that I’ve given you, and you’ll be taking
stunning photos in no time.
Have other tips for gorgeous bird
photography compositions? Share them in the comments!
