Day: October 30, 2018

Lucas Hedges Comes of Age, One Film at a Time

With the pressure of the lead role on him for the first time, Lucas Hedges was hearing voices. Vivid movie-critic voices.

 

“I would hear reviews in my head that were like: ‘It appears as if Hedges has nothing going on in his inner life. In what should be a very rich…'” says Hedges, writing the imaginary hatchet job in his head. “It was like: I’m never going to work again. The stakes felt very high.”

 

The reviews, like just about everything the 21-year-old actor has done, including his Oscar-nominated breakthrough role in “Manchester by Sea,” have turned out quite the opposite for Hedges in his first starring role. The acclaimed gay conversion therapy drama “Boy Erased,”out Friday, is the latest in a string of disarmingly natural performances by Hedges, even if during the film’s shoot, he felt like he was drowning.

 

Hedges ultimately found that the self-doubt could be beneficial. He could channel it into his performance as Garrard Conley, who chronicled his anguished insecurity as the gay son of Baptist parents (Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe) sent to a conversion camp in a 2016 memoir, the basis for Joel Edgerton’s film.

 

“There’s always a parallel journey going on in all of these projects,” Hedges said in a recent interview in a midtown Manhattan restaurant.

 

In parts large and small, Hedges has over the past two years assembled a portrait gallery of young men in strained, anxious periods of transition. He has been a newly parentless son (“Manchester by the Sea”), a gay teen in denial (“Lady Bird”), an abusive older brother (“Mid90s”) and a drug addict in recovery (“Ben Is Back”). Their struggles have all in some way mirrored Hedges’ own; their coming of age has been his.

 

“In the last few years, I’ve felt really restless and searching for the approval of the world,” says Hedges. “Moving forward, I can’t say I’ll be drawn to the same roles. But these parts have felt like no-brainers. There’s been a lot of transformation occurring within me.”

 

Hedges, a Brooklyn-native currently living with his older brother, Simon, in a Manhattan apartment, spoke on a day off from his Broadway debut in Kenneth Lonergan’s “The Waverly Gallery,” alongside Elaine May, Joan Allen and Michael Cera. (The latter has made himself a mentor to Hedges, giving him regular film assignments.)

 

Hedges’ father, the author-playwright-filmmaker Peter Hedges (“What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” “Pieces of April”), recently attended opening night. And while he’s been well aware of his son’s natural talent since a seventh grade production of “Nicholas Nickleby” (Hedges played Smike, the disabled boy), he was still impressed when he entered Lucas’ dressing room. On the wall were pictures of his grandmother for personal inspiration. (Hedges plays the grandson of a woman descending into dementia.)

 

“You walk in and you go, ‘Oh, there’s a real actor preparing in this room,'” says the elder Hedges. “Then it hits me that I get to be his dad.”

 

A decade ago, Peter cast his son in “Dan in Real Life” but ultimately cut his scene. It was a kind of blessing. Lucas later made it clear he wanted to make his own path, outside of his father.

 

“I wanted to have the life of an actor. I didn’t fantasize about acting. I wanted to be famous. I wouldn’t say I had the purest intentions of getting into this industry,” says Lucas. “And to be honest, I still don’t have the purest intentions.”

 

Such a line — far from the usual sort actors make promoting their movies — is reflective of Hedges’ rare humility. In the course of a wide-spanning interview Hedges spoke with candor about everything from his growing opportunities (“Honestly, there’s no shortage of parts for young, white, male actors. … That’s a weird thing to say.”), to his deep affection for the puberty sitcom “Big Mouth” to his history as a ranked squash player. He tends to deflect praise. About as far as he’ll go is to credit the material he’s gotten to be a part of: “Maybe I’m good at, like, being aware of what I’m working on is good.”

 

Others, though, don’t shy from complimenting.

 

“He has this blank-canvas, everyday-beautiful-ordinary regularness about him,” says Edgerton, who wrote and directed “Boy Erased.” “Lucas is an actor who holds the screen so well without words. The central character of `Boy Erased’ is such a quiet, put-upon person. Lucas was coming out of being a boy and transitioning into being a man.”

 

Hedges was lured back into working with his father by Julia Roberts, who lobbied for Lucas to star alongside her in Peter’s upcoming “Ben Is Back.” Lucas plays a young man home from rehab for the holidays; Roberts plays his mom.

 

“The hardest part of being the father of a young actor who has had inordinate early success, what my worry would be is that he now has to protect his place and constantly prove that he is a certain type of actor,” says Peter. “What impresses me is that he’s still thinking very much like a student. He’s always learning and growing.”

 

Both “Boy Erased” and “Ben Is Back,” Hedges says, are for him about overcoming shame.

 

“Shame has been a big part of my life and something I’ve really be able to come face-to-face with through these projects. I’ve gotten to look more directly at myself and heal those parts of me,” he says. “I try to approach every part in terms of: This part has come to me to heal something.”

 

Part of that process on “Boy Erased” was also coming to terms with his sexuality. In an interview last month with New York Magazine, Hedges said he’s “not totally straight, but also not gay and not necessarily bisexual.” Saying that publicly, he says, has been a relief.

 

“I don’t feel like I’m only attracted to women. There are people in my life that I’m afraid to say that to, and I don’t like it,” says Hedges. “But if I’m going to play this part, then I wouldn’t deserve to play it if I wasn’t able to be honest. This character had to risk everything in sharing his sexuality and being honest with himself. The least I can do is be like, ‘Am I doing the same?'”

 

It may have been a tumultuous period in Hedges’ life, one cathartically charted on screen. But it has brought him a hard-earned maturity.

 

“For the first time in my life,” Hedges says, “I’m more settled in myself.”

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Facebook 3Q Revenue Slightly Below Expectations

Facebook is reporting a slight revenue miss but stronger than expected profit in its third-quarter earnings report.

 

Coming three months after the company’s stock suffered its worst one-day drop in history, wiping out $119 billion of its market value, the mixed results were perhaps not the redemption Facebook hoped for.

 

But shares inched a bit higher after-hours, suggesting, at least, that the social media giant didn’t further spook investors. With the myriad problems Facebook has been grappling with lately, this is likely good news for the company.

 

Facebook had 2.27 billion monthly users at the end of the quarter, below the 2.29 billion analysts were expecting. Facebook says it changed the way it calculates users, which reduced the total slightly. The company’s user base was still up 10 percent from 2.07 billion monthly users a year ago.

 

Earnings were $1.76 a share and revenue was $13.73 billion, an increase of 33 percent, for the July-September period.

 

Analysts had expected earnings of $1.46 per share on revenue of $13.77 billion, according to FactSet.

The company warned last quarter that its revenue growth will slow down significantly for at least the rest of this year and that expenses will continue to balloon. The following day the stock plunged 19 percent. It was the biggest one-day plunge in history, and the shares not only haven’t recovered, they’ve since fallen further amid a broader decline in tech stocks .

 

Facebook’s investors, users, employees and executives have been grappling not just with questions over how much money the company makes and how many people use it, but its effects on users’ mental health and worries over what it’s doing to political discourse and elections around the world. Is Facebook killing us? Is it killing democracy?

 

The problems have been relentless for the past two years. Facebook can hardly crawl its way out of one before another comes up. It began with “fake news” and its effects on the 2016 presidential election (a notion CEO Mark Zuckerberg initially dismissed) and continued with claims of bias among conservatives that still haven’t relented.

 

Then there’s hate speech, hacks and a massive privacy scandal in which Facebook exposed user data to a data mining firm, along with resulting moves toward government regulation of social media.

 

Amid all this, there have been sophisticated attempts from Russia and Iran to interfere with elections and stir up political discord in the U.S.

 

Facebook’s stock climbed $2.68, or 1.8 percent, to $148.90 in after-hours trading.

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Malala Yousafzai to Receive Harvard Award for Activism

Nobel Prize Winner Malala Yousafzai is being honored by Harvard University for her work promoting girls’ education.

Harvard’s Kennedy School says Yousafzai will be awarded the 2018 Gleitsman Award at a Dec. 6 ceremony.

Yousafzai became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 when she was recognized for her global work supporting schooling for all children.

As a teen in Pakistan, she survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban. She later founded the nonprofit Malala Fund to support her work.

Harvard officials say her story has inspired a generation of boys and girls to follow in her footsteps.

Now 20, Yousafzai is a student at Oxford University in England.

The Gleitsman Award provides $125,000 for activism that has improved quality of life around the world. 

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US Presence at Cuba Trade Fair Dwindles Given Trump Hostility

A yellow excavator, forklift and other heavy equipment made by U.S. firm Caterpillar gleam outside Cuba’s annual trade fair, reflecting once-bright hopes for increased U.S.-Cuban commerce fanned by the 2014 detente between the old Cold War foes.

But inside the pavilion where U.S. firms present their wares, only eight have stands this year, according to a Reuters count. That is down from 13 last year and several dozen in 2015-16, underscoring the decline in U.S. business interest since Donald Trump became president.

Last year, the Trump administration tightened the decades-old trade embargo on the Communist-run island once more and sharply reduced staffing at the U.S. embassy in Havana due to a series of health incidents among U.S. diplomats.

“Trump has scared everyone off,” said Eduardo Aparicio, general manager of U.S. logistics company Apacargoexpress, operating under an exemption to the embargo allowing U.S. companies to sell food and medical supplies here.

Aparicio says he is struggling to find U.S. firms keen on doing business with Cuba given fears of reprisals from the Trump administration.

“Not that many things have changed with the Trump administration, but the outlook has. It no longer feels like we are advancing,” said Jay Brickman, vice president of Florida-based shipping company Crowley Maritime Corporation, which has been shipping to Cuba for 17 years.

“If you are a corporate executive who feels like nothing is happening, then eventually you look elsewhere.”

Brickman, Aparicio and others at Cuba’s premier business event said the country’s dire financial situation was another factor in declining U.S. business interest. Cuba is battling a cash crunch amid lower aid from ally Venezuela and weaker exports.

Brickman said Cuban orders via his firm were down 10 percent this year.

U.S. companies had embraced Cuba in the wake of the detente reached by former U.S. and Cuban Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro, jostling for a foothold in an opening market of 11 million consumers.

Lawyers working with U.S. firms interested in doing business with Cuba say the larger ones are taking a long-term view and remain keen.

Heavy equipment maker Caterpillar, for example, had lobbied to sell in Cuba for years before one of its dealers, privately held Puerto Rican company Rimco, said last year it was opening a distribution center here.

“This is the beginning of a lot of things to come,” Rimco Vice President Caroline McConnie said of the machinery displayed outside the pavilion.

McConnie said Rimco would look to rent as well as sell machines in Cuba given its cash crunch, and expected to announce its first two deals soon: one to rent equipment for quarries and another to sell marine motors for tugboats.

“We will benefit from the first movers’ advantage,” she said.

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UN Sets Out Massive Benefits from Air Pollution Action in Asia

Asia could reap massive benefits in health, environment, agriculture and economic growth if governments implement 25 policies such as banning the burning of household waste and cutting industrial emissions, according to a U.N. report.

Air pollution is a health risk for 4 billion people in Asia, killing about 4 million of them annually, and efforts to tackle the problem are already on track to ensure air pollution is no worse in 2030, but huge advances could be made, the report said.

The report’s 25 recommendations would cost an estimated $300 billion to $600 billion annually, a big investment but loose change compared with a projected $12 trillion economic growth increase.

The publication of the report, “Air Pollution in Asia and the Pacific: Science based solutions,” on Tuesday coincides with the World Health Organization holding its first global air pollution conference in Geneva this week

The recommendations also included post-combustion controls to cut emissions from power stations, higher standards for shipping fuels, ending routine flaring of gas from oil wells, and energy efficiency standards for industry and households.

The biggest gains would come from clean cooking, reducing emissions from industry, using renewable fuels for power generation and more efficient use of fertilizers.

Huge improvements in post-combustion controls and emission standards for road vehicles were already anticipated because of recent legislation, although both could be improved further.

Indeed, India may halt the use of private vehicles in the capital New Delhi if air pollution, which has reached severe levels in recent days, gets worse, a senior environmental official said Tuesday.

Authorities in the capital have already advised residents to keep outdoor activity to a minimum from the beginning of next month until at least the end of the Hindu festival of Diwali on Nov. 7, when firecrackers typically further taint air choked by the burning of crop stubble in neighboring states.

Helena Molin Valdes, head of Climate and Clean Air Coalition Secretariat at U.N. Environment, said there was increasing political openness to taking action on air pollution and the report reflected three years of discussions with governments.

“What the governments were saying in the region was: ‘Don’t tell us we have a problem, we know there is a problem, how can we deal with it and what will it take to do it?'” she said.

The report estimates its recommendations would cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent compared to a baseline scenario, potentially decreasing global warming by one-third of a degree Celsius by 2050, which would also be a contribution in the fight against climate change.

One billion people would enjoy high air quality, while the number exposed to the worst pollution would be cut by 80 percent to 430 million. Premature deaths would fall by a third.

Crop yields would benefit because of a reduction in ozone, which is estimated to have cut 2015 harvests by 10 percent for maize, 4 percent for rice, 22 percent for soy and 9 percent across Asia, a total of 51 million tons.

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Soviet-Era Moon Fragments Could Reach $1 Million at NY Auction

Wealthy space buffs will have the chance to own three small particles of lunar matter when what Sotheby’s describes as the only known documented “moon rocks” to be legally available for private ownership hit the auction block in November.

Sotheby’s said on Tuesday it expects the fragments, retrieved from the moon by a Soviet space mission in 1970, could fetch between $700,000 to $1 million at the Nov. 29 auction in New York.

The pieces — a basalt fragment, similar to most of the Earth’s volcanic rock, and bits of surface debris known as regolith — are being sold by an unidentified private American collector who purchased them in 1993.

Sotheby’s said in a statement they were first sold in 1993 by Nina Ivanovna Koroleva, the widow of former Soviet space program director Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.

The fragments, ranging in size from about .079 inch x .079 inch (2 x 2mm) to .039 inch x .039 inch (1 x 1mm), were presented to her as a gift on behalf of the Soviet Union in recognition of her late husband’s contributions to the program.

Sotheby’s said that the particles, encased under glass with a Russian plaque, are both the only known lunar sample to have ever been officially gifted to a private party, and with documented provenance to be available for private ownership.

Collectors pay huge sums for space exploration artifacts.

Last year, Sotheby’s sold a zippered bag stamped with the words “Lunar Sample Return” laced with moon dust which was used by Neil Armstrong for the first manned mission to the moon in 1969, for $1.8 million.

That sale took place after NASA lost a court battle to retrieve the artifact from a private collection.

Most other known samples taken from the moon remain with the two entities that collected them: the United States during the Apollo 11-17 missions and the Soviet Union via the unmanned Luna-16, Luna-20, and Luna-24 missions.

A number of other countries were gifted with Apollo 11 samples and Apollo 17 goodwill moon rocks on behalf on the Nixon administration, and in most places the law bars transferring such gifts to individuals.

The particles being sold in November were retrieved in September 1970 by Luna-16 which drilled a hole in the surface to a depth of 13.8 inches (35 cm) and extracted a core sample.

They are encased under glass below an adjustable lens and labeled “ЧАСТИЦЫ ГРУНТА ЛУНЫ-16″ [SOIL PARTICLES FROM LUNA-16].”

Tests on similar samples have dated the bits as being as much as 3.4 billion years old.

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China Steps Up VPN Blocks Ahead of Major Trade, Internet Shows

Chinese authorities have stepped up efforts to block virtual private networks (VPN), service providers said Tuesday in describing a “cat-and-mouse” game with censors ahead of a major trade expo and internet conference.

VPNs allow internet users in China, including foreign companies, to access overseas sites that authorities bar through the so-called Great Firewall, such as Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google.

Since Xi Jinping became president in 2013, authorities have sought to curb VPN use, with providers suffering periodic lags in connectivity because of government blocks.

“This time, the Chinese government seemed to have staff on the ground monitoring our response in real time and deploying additional blocks,” said Sunday Yokubaitis, the chief executive of Golden Frog, the maker of the VyprVPN service.

Authorities started blocking some of its services on Sunday, he told Reuters, although VyprVPN’s service has since been restored in China.

“Our counter measures usually work for a couple of days before the attack profile changes and they block us again,” Yokubaitis said.

The latest attacks were more aggressive than the “steadily increasing blocks” the firm had experienced in the second half of the year, he added.

The Cyberspace Administration of China did not respond immediately to a faxed request from Reuters to seek comment.

Another provider, ExpressVPN, also acknowledged connectivity issues on its services in China on Monday that sparked user complaints.

“There has long been a cat-and-mouse game with VPNs in China and censors regularly change their blocking techniques,” its spokesman told Reuters.

Last year, Apple Inc dropped a number of unapproved VPN apps from its app store in China, after Beijing adopted tighter rules.

Although fears of a blanket block on services have not materialized, industry experts say VPN connections often face outages around the time of major events in China.

Xi will attend a huge trade fair in Shanghai next week designed to promote China as a global importer and calm foreign concern about its trade practices, while the eastern town of Wuzhen hosts the annual World Internet Conference to showcase China’s vision for internet governance.

Censors may be testing new technology that blocks VPNs more effectively, said Lokman Tsui, who studies freedom of expression and digital rights at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

“It could be just a wave of experiments,” he said of the latest service disruptions.

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Apple’s New iPads Embrace Facial Recognition

Apple’s new iPads will resemble its latest iPhones as the company ditches a home button and fingerprint sensor to make room for the screen.

 

As with the iPhone XR and XS models, the new iPad Pro will use facial-recognition technology to unlock the device and authorize app and Apple Pay purchases.

 

Apple also unveiled new Mac models at an opera house in New York, where the company emphasized artistic uses for its products such as creating music, video and sketches. New Macs include a MacBook Air laptop with a better screen.

 

Research firm IDC says tablet sales have been declining overall, though Apple saw a 3 percent increase in iPad sales last year to nearly 44 million, commanding a 27 percent market share.

 

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Delhi’s ‘Pollution Season’ Dampens India’s Main Festival

It is the time of the year when Indians hit the roads to distribute gifts and sweets to friends and family, visit colorful “Diwali bazars” and party as they gear up to celebrate the main Hindu festival of Diwali on November 7. But in the Indian capital, there is a party spoiler: a deadly haze of pollution that has prompted calls to minimize exposure to the dirty air and is making some pack up and leave the city during the festival.

Grey smog shrouds New Delhi and satellite towns as winter approaches and authorities have advised citizens to avoid strenuous outdoor activity, take only short walks, shut windows, reduce use of private vehicles and wear masks as a precaution.

A range of emergency measures has also been announced to reduce air pollution, such as a temporary ban on construction activity and coal and biomass based industries starting Thursday.

The measures kick in as the level of PM2, the tiny particulate matter that can dangerously clog lungs exceeded by more than six times the safe limit set by the World Health Organization. Earlier this year, WHO named Delhi as the world’s most polluted megacity — the city and its surrounding towns are home to 19 million people.

“There are pollution hotspots in the city where we have seen levels that are hitting serious levels,” says Anumita Roy Chowdhury, Executive Director, Research and Advocacy at the Center for Science and Environment in New Delhi. “But at least the action has started and we are hoping the emergency response will help.”

The pollution in the city and surrounding towns is a toxic mix of of dust, fumes from vehicles, burning of waste and polluting industries, and has been exacerbated with explosive growth. It worsens at this time of the year as farmers set fire to thousands of hectares of farmland in neighboring states, Diwali revelers set off firecrackers and still winter air keeps pollutants hovering over the city.

Authorities have launched a campaign to prevent farmers from burning crop residue, which helps them prepare the fields for the next harvest without incurring heavy labor costs. The acrid smoke from the fields billows towards Delhi, becoming one of the major triggers for the city’s deadly smog.

State authorities are optimistic the number of fires has been reduced as the government offers subsidies on equipment that enables farmers to plant the new crop with the stubble still in the fields and imposes fines on those who still light up the residue on their fields. But thousands of resentful farmers continue to burn the stubble, saying it is easier to pick up a matchstick and pay the penalty rather than invest in the equipment.

Others grumble the additional expense is cutting into already slim farm profits and leaving their crop more vulnerable to pests like rats.

“We don’t like scorching mother earth, but only when you work at the ground level you know the challenges you face,” said Vinod Kumar, who has a 16-hectare farm in Karnal in neighboring Haryana state. He does not find it viable to plant the new crop with the stubble still standing in the fields. “The taller stubble has to be set on fire.”

Even as crop fires rage, an ease on a ban on firecrackers by the Supreme Court has intensified New Delhi’s pollution worries. The top court rejected calls for an outright ban and said “green crackers” would be allowed for a two-hour window on Diwali.

But many in the country, including shops selling firecrackers, appeared clueless about what is an environmentally safe firework. They are doing brisk business — many in the city are loath to give up the age-old custom, which they see as an intrinsic part of Diwali celebrations despite several campaigns urging people to stay away from firecrackers.

Doctors are already advising people suffering from respiratory problems to leave the city and those who can afford to heed the warning are taking it seriously.

New Delhi resident, Pradeep Bhargava, who has suffered bouts of asthma, is taking no chances after last year when pollution spiked to its worst-ever level around Diwali and prompted doctors to declare a “medical emergency” and authorities to shut schools. “The pollution is the major factor that we are heading to the hills, but five days out of the city won’t really help,” he said. “We have to breathe the dirty air through the winter.”

 

Many environmentalists agree and point out that emergency measures taken during the smog season will not fix Delhi’s pollution crisis. “Focus now will really have to shift more towards round-the year plan so that those systemic reforms take place so that by next winter we begin to see more substantial changes,” said Chowdhury from the Center of Science and Environment.

 

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African Filmmaker Tells Tales of South African Migrants

The film Vaya from Nigerian-born director Akin Omotoso, tells the story of three people who journey from their rural homes in South Africa to Johannesburg. As Mike O’Sullivan reports, it’s a story of migration that deals with universal themes.

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Izmir Turkey Hosts Street Festival With Balkan Dance Performances

Folk dance groups from 11 Balkan countries gathered in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir, Turkey for the 13th annual Balkan Folk Dance Festival. The dance groups performed in different districts of Izmir. Aside from Turkey, dance groups from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Greece came together to dance. VOA’s Soner Kizilkaya attended one of the festivals and filed this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.

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How Old is Cacao? New Research Pushes Back Date

New research strengthens the case that people used the chocolate ingredient cacao in South America 5,400 years ago, underscoring the seed’s radical transformation into today’s Twix bars and M&M candies.

 

Tests indicate traces of cacao on artifacts from an archaeological site in Ecuador, according to a study published Monday. That’s about 1,500 years older than cacao’s known domestication in Central America.

 

“It’s the earliest site now with domesticated cacao,” said Cameron McNeil of Lehman College in New York, who was not involved in the research.

 

The ancient South American civilization likely didn’t use cacao to make chocolate since there’s no established history of indigenous populations in the region using it that way, researchers led by the University of British Columbia in Canada said.

 

But the tests indicate the civilization used the cacao seed, not just the fruity pulp. The seeds are the part of the cacao pod used to make chocolate.

 

Indigenous populations in the upper Amazon region today use cacao for fermented drinks and juices, and it’s probably how it was used thousands of years ago as well, researchers said.

Scientists mostly agree that cacao was first domesticated in South America instead of Central America as previously believed. The study in Nature Ecology & Evolution provides fresh evidence.

 

Three types of tests were conducted using artifacts from the Santa Ana-La Florida site in Ecuador. One tested for the presence of theobromine, a key compound in cacao; another tested for preserved particles that help archeologists identify ancient plant use; a third used DNA testing to identify cacao.

 

Residue from one ceramic artifact estimated to be 5,310 to 5,440 years old tested positive for cacao by all three methods. Others tested positive for cacao traces as well, but were not as old.

 

How cacao’s use spread between South America and Central America is not clear. But by the time Spanish explorers arrived in Central America in the late 1400s, they found people were using it to make hot and cold chocolate drinks with spices, often with a foamy top.

 

“For most of the modern period, it was a beverage,” said Marcy Norton, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World.”

 

The chocolate drinks in Central America often contained maize and differ from the hot chocolate sold in the U.S. They did not contain milk, Norton said, and when they were sweetened, it was with honey.

 

By the 1580s, cacao was being regularly imported into Spain and spread to other European countries with milk being added along the way. It wasn’t until the 1800s that manufacturing advances in the Netherlands transformed chocolate into a solid product, Norton said.

Michael Laiskonis, who teaches chocolate classes the Institute of Culinary Education, said he’s seeing a growing interest in cacao flavors, indicating a return to a time when chocolate wasn’t just an ingredient buried in a candy bar.

He said he tries to incorporate chocolate’s past into his classes, including a 1644 recipe that combines Mayan and Aztec versions of drinks with European influences.

 

“It’s something that’s always been transforming,” he said.

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Zimbabwean Widows Punished by Tribal Courts for Selling Gold-rich Land

When massive gold deposits were discovered about a decade ago in Chimanimani, eastern Zimbabwe, the rural district became famous for attracting hundreds of artisanal miners from across the country every year.

Wealthy small-scale prospectors regularly offer residents generous deals for their land, locals say. To many widows selling their unused land, that kind of money can be life-changing and a source of greater autonomy.

But in recent years, widows in Chimanimani have found that taking a deal can have consequences. Many say they have been taken to tribal courts by their husbands’ families for selling portions of their land.

“I feel bruised,” said Mavis, a 63-year-old widow from Haroni village who did not want to disclose her surname.

“I lived in peace as a widow in my home until last year, when I sold an unwanted acre of my late husband’s land to korokoza,” she said, using a colloquial term for an artisanal gold miner.

He paid her $2,000 in cash. “All hell broke loose,” Mavis explained.

When her male relatives found out about the sale, they reported her to the tribal court.

“The accusations were insane. They said I bewitched my husband, even though he died way back in 1979, in the colonial war,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The cultural norms of the Ndau people, who make up the majority of the population in Chimanimani, forbid widows from owning land their husbands leave behind or selling that land unless a male family member controls the transaction.

As her uncles laid claim to her late husband’s property, Mavis joined a growing number of widows whose male family members have denied them the right to sell land they are supposed to legally inherit.

“In our village, I am the fourth widow since 2017 to be brought to (tribal court) for selling land without male approval,” she said.

Her case is still ongoing.

Tribal Justice

According to Zimbabwe’s latest census, which was conducted in 2012, there are more than half a million widows in the country.

Throughout rural areas, widows routinely find themselves harassed and exploited by in-laws claiming the property their husbands left behind, rights activists say.

O’bren Nhachi, an activist and researcher focusing on natural resources and governance, said the problem has gotten worse in Chimanimani over the past few years, as the gold rush has pushed up the value of land.

“Chimanimani was a poor backwater district until gold was discovered. Suddenly, local land prices shot up because artisanal gold diggers are paying huge sums to snap up plots,” he said. “This has brought conflict, with male family members using patriarchy as a tool to dispossess widows of potential land sales income.”

Although Zimbabwe’s constitution gives women and men equal rights to property and land, in many rural communities tradition overrides national legislation, experts say.

Tribal custom dictates that chiefs are the custodians of communal land, and responsible for allocating land to villagers.

“A woman cannot sell land unless she has obtained permission from my Committee of Seven,” said Mutape Moyo, a tribal headman in Chimanimani, referring to the group of elders — all men — who hear cases in the local customary court.

But this makes it unclear who has legal ownership of land, Nhachi said.

“The laws of the country say the state is the owner of all land. Tribal chiefs are merely ‘custodians’. Does custodian mean they are owners?”

In a country where women carry out 70 percent of the agricultural work – according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization – Nhachi said more women need to be made aware of how to legally hold onto their land if their husbands die.

He said he would like to see the government implement legal awareness programs and properly define who owns and distributes land in rural Zimbabwe.

No Recourse

Provincial administrator Edward Seenza, the head civil servant of Manicaland province, where Chimanimani is located, said that if widows lose their land in tribal courts, there are ways for them to appeal and reverse the ruling.

“If anyone is unhappy with a village head’s decision, they can speak to a chief,’ he said. “Where this does not produce the desired result, they can take their complaint to the district administrator and further up to my office.”

But activists say few rural women know they have that option. And those who do are often too poor or too scared to travel to a government office.

Seenza said that so far, not one woman has come to him to appeal a tribal court ruling.

And without legal help, widows denied the right to sell their land can be left devastated.

Rejoice, a 38-year-old widow from Chipinge district, sold her late husband’s mango orchard two years ago to a wealthy gold digger for $4,000. She needed the money to pay for medication to treat a kidney tumor.

Her father-in-law took her to tribal court.

“I was ordered to refund the buyer, in cash, with punitive interest; pay court fines for ‘disrespect’; and surrender the rest of the land to male family custodians,” said Rejoice, whose name has been changed to protect her identity.

She paid back the buyer as much as she could, but still owes him some money. And her husband’s family is still fighting for ownership of the land, she added.

The court told her that if she does not honor the ruling, she could be thrown out of her home.

“I will end up a destitute, living on the roadside,” she said. “The thought of this gives me sleepless nights.”

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Mountain Birds on ‘Escalator to Extinction’ as Planet Warms

A meticulous re-creation of a three-decade-old study of birds on a mountainside in Peru has given scientists a rare chance to prove how the changing climate is pushing species out of the places they are best adapted to. 

Surveys of more than 400 species of birds in 1985 and then in 2017 have found that populations of almost all had declined, as many as eight had disappeared completely, and nearly all had moved to higher elevations in what scientists call “an escalator to extinction.” 

“Once you move up as far as you can go, there’s nowhere else left,” said John W. Fitzpatrick, a study author and director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. “On this particular mountain, some ridgetop bird populations were literally wiped out.”

It’s not certain whether the birds shifted ranges because of temperature changes, or indirect impacts, such as shifts in the ranges of insects or seeds that they feed on. 

These findings, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirm what biologists had long suspected, but had few opportunities to confirm. The existence of a 1985 survey of birds on the same mountain gave scientists a rare and useful baseline. 

Past research has documented habitats of birds and other species moving up in elevation or latitude in response to warming temperatures. But Mark Urban, director of the Center of Biological Risk at the University of Connecticut, who was not involved in the study said it was the first to prove what climate change models predicted: that rising temperatures will lead to local extinctions.

“A study like this where you have historical data you can go back to and compare is very rare,” said Urban. “As long as the species can disperse, you will see species marching up the mountain, until that escalator becomes a stairway to heaven.”

In 1985, Fitzpatrick established a basecamp alongside a river running down a mountain slope in southeastern Peru, aiming to catalog the habitat ranges of tropical bird species that lived there. His team spent several weeks trekking up and down the Cerro de Pantiacolla, using fine nets called mist nets to catch and release birds, and keeping detailed journals of birds they caught, spotted or heard chirping in the forests.

Two years ago, Fitzpatrick passed his journals, photos and other records to Benjamin Freeman, a postdoctoral fellow at the Biodiversity Research Centre at the University of British Columbia. Freeman, who has been researching tropical birds for more than a decade, set out to recreate the journey in August and September of 2017. Using old photos of mountain views, his team located the same basecamp. 

Freeman largely recreated Fitzpatrick’s path and methodology to see what had happened in the intervening years, a period when average mean temperatures on the mountain rose 0.76 degrees Fahrenheit (0.42 degrees Celsius). Because the mountain lies at the edge of a national park, the area hadn’t been disturbed. 

In addition to unfurling 40-foot (12-meter) mist nets on the slopes, Freeman’s team placed 20 microphone boxes on the mountain to record the chirps of birds that might not easily be seen.

“We found that the bird communities were moving up the slope to reach the climate conditions to which they were originally adapted,” said Freeman, the lead author of the study. Near the top of the mountain the bird species moved higher by 321 feet (98 meters), on average.

“We think temperature is the master-switch in explaining why species live where they do on mountain slopes,” said Freeman. “A huge majority of species in our study were doing the same thing.”

Birds adapted to live within narrow temperature bands — in regions without wide seasonal variations — may be particularly vulnerable to climate change, Fitzpatrick said.

“We should expect that what’s happening on this mountaintop is happening more generally in the Andes, and other tropical mountain ranges,” he said. 

 

 

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Pro Wrestling Proves a Hit with Egyptian Crowds

When a high school in the northern Egyptian city of Ismailia hosted a pro wrestling event, the crowd spilled over onto the roofs of neighboring buildings.

Pro wrestling, a popular entertainment form in the U.S., mixes theatrical performance with athletics and is gaining traction in Egypt where thousands came to watch the strong men wearing face paint do battle in Ismailia.

The program was run by Ashraf Mahrous, the 37-year-old founder of the Egyptian Arab Federation of Professional Wrestlers.

The martial arts coach learned about pro wrestling from watching American, European and Japanese wrestlers on TV. He started organizing matches in 2013, he said, but it was only about two years ago that large audiences of more than 1,000 people started showing up.

He says he funds the wrestling program from his own savings, hoping the program can become profitable and also more international once he has found a sponsor. Entrance is free.

“The dream of my life is to go international,” said Mahrous, who also goes by his nickname Captain Ashraf Kapunga.

Momen Hassan Ali, a wrestler nicknamed “al-Magnoun,” meaning “the crazy one,” said a day of training starts around 7:30 a.m. and doesn’t finish before the Maghrib prayer, which takes place right after sunset.

The wrestlers performing in Friday’s match were all men, but the program is the first in Egypt to also allow women to participate.

“Girls of Egypt can do anything,” said 22-year-old Aya Hanid, one of the female wrestlers. “Not just get a degree and then get married and stay at home.”

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US Survey: What Pay Gap? Men Less Aware of Women’s Workplace Struggles

Far more men than women think their companies offer equal pay and promote the sexes equally, yet younger generations are wising up, a U.S. entertainment industry survey found on Monday.

Only a quarter of women think their employers pay them the same as men, while twice as many men believe their company has no gender pay gap, according to the survey by CNBC, a business news channel, and job-oriented social networking site LinkedIn.

About one third of women said both sexes rise up the ranks at the same rate in their workplaces, while more than half of men think the promotion rates are equal, according to responses from at least 1,000 LinkedIn members who work in entertainment.

“Men, typically we found across industries … they’re not as cognizant as their female counterparts to these issues,” said Caroline Fairchild, managing editor at LinkedIn.

Other surveys in finance and technology have revealed similar findings, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Congress outlawed pay discrimination based on gender in the federal Equal Pay Act in 1963, yet public debate over why wages still lag drastically for women has snowballed in recent years.

Last year in the United States, working women earned 82 percent of what men were paid, the Pew Research Center found.

According to the CNBC-LinkedIn survey, four in five women said the workplace holds more obstacles to advancement for women than for men, but only about half of men held the same opinion.

However the survey found that younger men were more likely than their older peers to say they were aware of the obstacles that stop women from succeeding at work, according to Fairchild.

“Perhaps the old guard of the industry is thinking a certain way, but we are seeing a perception change in what perhaps younger people in the industry are thinking,” she added.

A U.S. appeals court in San Francisco ruled in April that employers cannot use workers’ salary histories to justify gender-based pay disparities, saying that would perpetuate a wage gap that is “an embarrassing reality of our economy.”

A handful of U.S. cities and states ban employers from asking potential hires about their salary histories.

The World Economic Forum reported a global economic gap of 58 percent between the sexes for 2016 and forecast women would have to wait 217 years before they are treated equally at work.

Gender inequality in the workplace could cost the world more than $160.2 trillion in lost earnings, according to the World Bank. The figure compares the difference in lifetime income of everyone of working age and if women earned as much as men.

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Scientists: Producing Bitcoin Currency Could Void Climate Change Efforts

Demand for bitcoin could single-handedly derail efforts to limit global warming because the increasingly popular digital currency takes huge amounts of energy to produce, scientists said on Monday.

Producing bitcoin at a pace with growing demand could by 2033 defeat the aim of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, according to U.S. research published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Almost 200 nations agreed in Paris in 2015 on the goal to keep warming to “well below” a rise of 2°C above pre-industrial times.

But mining, the process of producing bitcoins by solving mathematical equations, uses high-powered computers and alto of electricity, the researchers said.

“Currently, the emissions from transportation, housing and food are considered the main contributors to ongoing climate change,” said study co-author Katie Taladay in a statement. “This research illustrates that bitcoin should be added to this list.”

Mining is a lucrative business, with one bitcoin currently selling for about $6,300 (4,900 British pounds).

In 2017, bitcoin production and usage emitted an estimated 69 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, the researchers said.

That year, bitcoin was involved in less than half of 1 percent of the world’s cashless transactions, they said.

As the currency becomes more common, researchers said it could use enough electricity to emit about 230 gigatons of carbon within a decade and a half. One gigaton is equal to one billion metric tons of carbon.

“No matter how you slice it, that thing is using a lot of electricity. That means bad business for the environment,” Camilo Mora, another co-author, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Bitcoin mining, however, is becoming more energy efficient, said Katrina Kelly-Pitou, research associate at the University of Pittsburgh.

She said bitcoin miners are moving away from sites such as China, with coal-generated electricity, to more environmentally friendly utilities in Iceland and the United States.

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US Restricts Exports to Chinese Semiconductor Firm Fujian Jinhua

Opening a new front in its trade and technology disputes with China, the Trump administration on Monday took action to cut off a Chinese state-backed semiconductor maker from U.S. exports of components, software and technology goods.

The Commerce Department said it has put Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co Ltd on a list of entities that cannot purchase such products from U.S. firms, citing a “significant risk” that the Chinese firm’s new memory chip capacity will threaten the viability of American suppliers of such chips for military systems.

It said in a statement that Fujian Jinhua “poses a significant risk of becoming involved in activities that are contrary to the national interests of the United States.”

The action is similar to a Commerce Department move that nearly put Chinese telecommunications equipment company ZTE out of business earlier this year by cutting it off from U.S. suppliers.

ZTE, which had violated a deal to settle violations of sanctions on Iran and North Korea, was allowed to resume purchases of U.S. products after a revised settlement and payment of a $1 billion fine.

The action against Fujian Jinhua is likely to ignite new tensions between Beijing and Washington since the company is at the heart of the “Made in China 2025” program to develop new high-technology industries.

The world’s top two economies are already waging a major tariff war over their trade disputes, with U.S. duties in place on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods and Chinese duties on $110 billion of U.S. goods.

Fujian Jinhua, which is starting up a new $5.7 billion chip factory in Fujian province, is linked to the Trump administration’s accusations that China has systematically stolen and forced the transfer of American technology.

Fujian Jinhua and Taiwanese partner United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) were accused last December by U.S. memory chip maker Micron Technology Inc of stealing Micron chip designs through poached employees, a case still under way in a California court.

UMC countersued in a Chinese court, accusing Micron of infringing its patents, leading to a temporary ban in July on sales of Micron’s main products in China.

It was not immediately clear what effect the Commerce Department action will have on Fujian Jinhua’s operations.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement that the Chinese firm’s new plant likely was the beneficiary of “U.S.-origin technology” and its additional production would threaten the long-term viability of U.S. chipmakers.

“When a foreign company engages in activity contrary to our national security interests, we will take strong action to protect our national security,” he said. “Placing Jinhua on the Entity List will limit its ability to threaten the supply chain for essential components in our military systems.”

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