The U.S.-led Global Coalition to Defeat the Islamic State (IS) was announced five years ago. Despite defeating the terror group militarily, some experts believe IS still poses a major threat to global security. Sirwan Kajjo reports from Washington.
Americans on Wednesday are marking the 18th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed almost 3,000 people in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania.
President Donald Trump is observing the day with a morning moment of silence at the White House before attending a ceremony at the Pentagon for families of those killed when al-Qaida terrorists flew a hijacked plane into the building.
In New York, hundreds of survivors and family members of those killed are gathering at Ground Zero, where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center stood before two al-Qaida-hijacked commercial flights brought them down.
Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to attend ceremonies in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, near where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after passengers took control from the terrorists who had hijacked the plane.
Nineteen men affiliated with al-Qaida carried out the four hijackings.
The deadliest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor in 1941, the events of Sept. 11 permanently changed America’s perception of security and prompted then-President George W. Bush to declare war on terrorism and invade Afghanistan.
U.S.-led coalition forces knocked the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, but the conflict is still ongoing, ranking as the United States’ longest war. U.S. and Taliban representatives have held recent peace talks, but just as details of a potential agreement were being made public, President Donald Trump canceled planned meetings with Taliban and Afghan officials because of continued Taliban attacks in Kabul.
The United States searched for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden for years after the attacks, and in May 2011 a team of U.S. Navy Seals raided a compound in Abbottabod, Pakistan, where they shot him dead.
Memorials for those killed in the attacks now stand at all three sites in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania. The Pentagon crash site was quickly rebuilt after the attacks. A new tower at the World Trade Center site took longer to construct, but now rises above the Manhattan skyline as the tallest building in the United States.
It was a sobering moment this July 1 in Gillette, Wyoming, when two of the largest coal mines in the country closed in midshift.
Melissa Peterson Worden was one of about 600 people who lost their jobs that day, when the nation’s sixth-largest coal mining company, Blackjewel, abruptly went out of business.
“It is the thing they said would never happen,” Worden said. “And it happened.”
Blackjewel had applied for bankruptcy protection that morning. But the company couldn’t get funding to keep the mines running while courts sorted out its finances. So the mines closed that afternoon. They haven’t opened since.
Blackjewel’s bankruptcy underscores the paradigm shift taking place in the electric power industry. In just the last decade or so, more than half of the nation’s 530 coal-fired power plants have shut down or announced plans to do so as cheaper, cleaner alternatives have moved in, according to the Sierra Club.
While the downturn in the coal industry has hit hard in the Eastern U.S. region of Appalachia, Wyoming is the nation’s largest coal producer by far. The state dug more than 316 million tons of coal in 2017, more than all seven states of Appalachia combined.
Companies with mines in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin were thought to have “jewels in their balance sheets,” said Robert Godby, director of the University of Wyoming’s Center for Energy Economics and Public Policy, “because the Powder River Basin was so profitable.”
“But that’s changed in a few short years,” he added. “The tide has just turned so quickly that it’s caught a lot of people off guard.”
Rock bottom prices
Even as the coal industry faltered elsewhere, the Powder River Basin thought it would weather the downturn.
Coal is so easy to mine in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, the local joke goes, that all you need is a golf club. Huge seams lie just below the surface.
The mines are massive. Seven of the 10 largest mines in the country are here. Dump trucks the size of houses carry 400 tons of coal at a time through terraced craters carved out of the grasslands.
The huge economies of scale meant coal from these mines was among the cheapest in the country. The state supplies 40% of the nation’s coal, fueling power plants from Georgia to Oregon.
Coal’s backers blame the Obama administration environmental regulations for closing plants that have kept the lights on for generations.
But experts say the decline has more to do with the rapid rise of cheaper natural gas since the mid-2000s. And the plunging cost of solar and wind power in just the last few years is helping renewable energy further cut into coal’s market.
That’s forcing a reckoning in places like Gillette, Wyoming, the de facto capital of the Powder River basin.
Change comes to the ‘energy capital’
Mining is “kind-of a family thing” for Rory Wallet.
His father, stepfather and sister all have worked in the coal mines around Gillette, he said. His grandfather was a phosphate miner before that.
“It’s a wonderful way to make a living. A decent, livable living,” he said. “I’ve got four kids, so it’s a great way to keep them insured and keep food on the table and keep a good home over their head.”
But Wallet lost his job in the Blackjewel bankruptcy.
“We’re struggling,” he said. “The big one for us is the house payment.”
He’s kept up his spirits and those of hundreds of others with a Facebook page that’s become a de facto support group for former Blackjewel workers.
Mining is a high paying job with good benefits that doesn’t require higher education. When mining jobs dry up, experts say, it’s hard to find a substitute.
That poses a problem for Gillette, population 30,000. The city bills itself as the “Energy Capital of the Nation.”
While Gillette and Wyoming are profiting from oil and gas development, those industries tend to boom and bust. Coal has been a relatively steady source of tax revenue for decades.
“Coal has built the city as you see it,” said Gillette Mayor Louise Carter-King.
Gillette has weathered previous downturns. But the mayor sees the coal industry is on a downward trajectory.
“That’s why it’s important that we diversify,” she said.
The carbon prize
The city and the state have a lot riding on an experimental project called the Integrated Test Center attached to a coal-fired power plant just outside town. The $15 million facility allows researchers to plug directly into the plant’s exhaust and study ways to capture the planet-warming carbon dioxide.
Many experts consider carbon capture essential to fighting climate change. The world’s existing power plants, factories, vehicles and other fossil fuel-burning infrastructure are already on track to produce enough carbon dioxide to push the planet into catastrophic warming, scientists say.
While coal plants are closing in the United States and Europe, the rest of the world is building or planning to build hundreds more.
Carbon capture technology is not yet commercially viable, however, and is years away at best.
Next year, the center will be one of two sites hosting the $20 million Carbon XPRIZE. The other site is in Alberta, Canada. Teams from around the world will compete to find the best way to turn the plant’s carbon dioxide emissions into profitable products, such as building materials or chemicals.
Whether they win or lose, Carter-King hopes some of the teams competing for the prize will set up shop in Gillette permanently.
In the meantime, Rory Wallet said recent events have shaken his faith in coal — but not much.
“I’d lie if I said it didn’t,” he said. However, he added, “I plan on hanging on. If I don’t get a coal job immediately I’ll keep looking in the basin. They’re always available.”
Miners are a family, he said, and “it’s something I love doing.”
But there is a growing sense in Gillette that, after keeping the lights on for decades, coal will not be there forever.
The big question is, what’s next?
“The United States is saying, ‘What do you have for us now?’“ Melissa Peterson Worden said. “And we have to come up with a better answer than, ‘If you don’t like coal, don’t turn your lights on.’ We can’t be those people anymore.”
Britain is getting set for a general election likely to be held in November, as the political crisis over the country’s exit from the European Union deepens.
The British parliament was officially suspended or “prorogued” in the early hours of Tuesday, just weeks before the country is due to crash out of the European Union. Opposition lawmakers have branded the move a coup by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and have vowed to take him to court if he refuses to request a Brexit extension from the European Union.
Britain is scheduled to leave the bloc Oct. 31, although legislation passed last week by opposition MPs seeks to force the prime minister to ask Brussels for an extension to the Brexit process if no exit deal can be reached.
The political stalemate must be broken soon, says Stephen Booth, acting director of the Open Europe policy group in London.
“Clearly we are gearing up for a general election at some time or other, probably in November now. And I think increasingly everything is going to be framed in those terms. Which is one of the reasons why (opposition Labour leader) Jeremy Corbyn and the anti no-deal MPs are quite keen to see Boris Johnson sent to Brussels in a humiliating fashion to ask for an extension,” Booth said.
Johnson says Brexit will happen
Boris Johnson joined lessons at a London primary school Tuesday, announcing new investment in education widely seen as a warmup for an election campaign.
“I think we will get a deal (with the EU). But if absolutely necessary we will come out with no deal,” the prime minister told reporters.
Opposition MPs have warned they will take Johnson to court if he refuses to ask for an extension. The government is looking for an escape route, says analyst Booth.
“One is simply refusing to comply and seeing what happens in terms of any court cases or legal action that might happen,” he said.
Parliament suspended
For now Parliament has been silenced, much to the indignation of opposition lawmakers.
At 2 a.m. Tuesday several MPs interrupted the suspension ceremony by trying to physically restrain the speaker from leaving his chair. Others held up protest banners and shouted “Shame on you!” at ruling Conservative MPs.
The government will likely frame any election campaign as the people versus an intransigent parliament trying to overturn the Brexit referendum, says Catherine Barnard, professor of European Union Law at the University of Cambridge.
“There’s a real irony about this of course because in the referendum a lot of people said they voted leave because they wanted to take back control to the Westminster parliament. And now what we’re seeing, the narrative that’s being developed, is direct democracy through referendum versus representative democracy through MPs,” Barnard says.
In Brussels, the European Union Tuesday began appointing a new team of commissioners. Even if Britain asks for an extension, some EU members could veto it, Booth says.
“We’ve heard certain noises from particularly the French government, and I think that is indicative of a growing frustration in the European Union of sort of, ‘We are open to an extension but what is the plan?’”
In Ireland, there are fears that any border checks resulting from Brexit could spark a return to sectarian violence. Such concerns were underlined Monday as dissident Republicans attacked police with petrol bombs in Londonderry, a reminder that the implications of Brexit go far beyond the theatrics of Westminster.
Renée Zellweger said she felt a “sense of responsibility” to portray the late singer Judy Garland as authentically as possible in the movie “Judy,” which was shown at the Toronto Film Festival on Tuesday to a standing ovation.
The film depicts the last six months of Garland’s life, arriving in London in 1968 as part of a sold-out concert tour meant to refurbish her financial state.
Amidst a rocky custody battle with her fourth husband and accompanied on the tour by her fifth and final husband, Micky Dean, played by Finn Wittrock, Garland struggles with depression, anxiety and addiction.
Zellweger called her portrayal of Garland a “continued sort of exploration” between the famous actress and singer’s public persona and her private experiences.
“There are many parameters that are non-negotiable that have been said on the public record and through Judy’s own words and things. So you kind of feel a sense of responsibility to represent that as authentically as possible,” Zellweger said.
“And then the rest was pretty difficult to know because we’re talking about very private moments that haven’t been shared and it’s sort of an interpretation of what the experiences of the person who was living under those circumstances at that time might be like.”
Zellweger is known for method acting, where she doesn’t break character even when a scene is finished filming – a trait that helped her fellow cast members inhabit Garland’s world too.
Wittrock didn’t even recognize his co-star the first time he saw her in character.
“From kind of that point on until the end, I very rarely saw this Renée Zellweger, you know? I hung out with Judy,” he told Reuters Television.
Zellweger’s performance has received positive reviews.
“Renée was perfect because she’s a great actress, but also she sings, she’s very funny and she has a big heart,” said Rupert Goold, the director of the film. “Audiences feel they know Renée at a certain level, that she’s one of them. And I think that’s a very Garland-like quality.”
“Judy” is released in the U.S. on September 27.
Former Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni was nominated Tuesday to take the key role of European Commissioner for Economic Affairs, where he will oversee public spending in member states, most notably in Italy.
The choice of Gentiloni was a surprise move by Ursula von der Leyen, the incoming head of the European Commission, who named her new team of top officials from a list of nominees proposed by all EU member states apart from Britain.
Gentiloni will take over from Pierre Moscovici, a former French finance minister who spent most his five-years as commissioner in battle with Italy over its colossal debt and chronic overspending.
The EU has strict rules on public spending, with countries expected to deliver national budgets with deficits that do not exceed three percent of GDP with debt not over 60 percent.
Italy’s public debt currently stands at a daunting 132 percent of GDP and the new government in Rome will struggle to meet belt-tightening commitments already made to Brussels, potentially leaving Gentiloni in the delicate role of enforcing rules against his own country.
Rome’s new government, which brings together the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and the centre-left Democratic Party, has indicated that it wants to pursue an “expansive” economic policy, but “without jeopardising” sound public finances.
Plans tabled by Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte include a demand to reform the EU budget rules, a gambit that will face fierce pushback by Germany and the Netherlands that cherish balanced budgets across Europe.
In introducing her new team on Tuesday, von der Leyen described Gentiloni as “very experienced”.
“He knows the difficult issues we face,” she added.
According to her organisational plans, Gentiloni will be overseen by Valdis Dombrovskis, a former Latvian prime minister who returns to the commission as Executive Vice President over economic affairs.
The politically right-of-centre Dombrovskis held a similar role in the last commission and was often in turf fights behind the scenes with Moscovici.
An Iranian female soccer fan has died after setting herself on fire outside a court after learning she may have to serve a six-month sentence for trying to enter a soccer stadium, a semi-official news agency reported Tuesday.
The tragic death immediately drew an outcry among some soccer stars and known figures in Iran, where women are banned from soccer stadiums, though they are allowed at some other sports, such as volleyball.
Sahar Khodayari died at a Tehran hospital on Monday, according to the Shafaghna news agency. The 30-year-old was known as the “Blue Girl” on social media for the colors of her favorite Iranian soccer team, Esteghlal.
She set herself on fire last week, reportedly after learning she may have to go to prison for trying to enter a stadium in March to watch an Esteghlal match. She was pretending to be a man and wore a blue hairpiece and a long overcoat when the police stopped her.
Khodayari, who had graduated in computer sciences, then spent three nights in jail before being released pending the court case. No verdict had been delivered in her case so far.
Esteghlal issued a statement, offering condolences to Khodayari’s family.
Former Bayern Munich midfielder Ali Karimi – who played 127 matches for Iran and has been a vocal advocate of ending the ban on women – urged Iranians in a tweet to boycott soccer stadiums to protest Khodayari’s death.
Iranian-Armenian soccer player Andranik “Ando” Teymourian, the first Christian to be the captain of Iran’s national squad and also an Esteghlal player, said in a tweet that one of Tehran’s major soccer stadiums will be named after Khodayari, “once, in the future.”
The minister of information and communications technology, Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, described the death as a “bitter incident.” Female lawmaker Parvaneh Salahshouri called Khodayari “Iran’s Girl” and tweeted: “We are all responsible.”
Malawi has crowned Ms. and Mr. Albinism during the country’s first ever beauty pageant for albinos, held in the capital Lilongwe. The Association of People with Albinism organized the event as part of efforts to destroy myths which have led to albino attacks in Malawi and other African countries. Lameck Masina reports from Lilongwe.
Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam said Tuesday it would be “extremely inappropriate” for the United States or any other foreign government to interfere in the city’s affairs.
The embattled leader’s warning was in response to a rally outside the U.S. consulate Sunday held by pro-democracy demonstrators calling for passage of a bipartisan bill in the U.S. Congress aimed at boosting their efforts.
The legislation would require Washington to annually assess the former British colony’s level of autonomy from Beijing and cancel its trading privileges if that autonomy is compromised.
Sunday’s rally evolved into yet another violent clash between protesters accused of vandalizing subway stations and blocking traffic, and riot police who responded by firing tear gas to force the protesters to disperse.
“The escalation and continuation of violence cannot solve the problems we face in Hong Kong,” Lam said Tuesday, further warning that it would only deepen the conflict.
The demonstrations began in June as a backlash against a proposed extradition bill, which would have permitted criminal suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial in courts controlled by the ruling Communist Party. They have since evolved into renewed demands for Hong Kongers to choose their own leaders, establishing an independent investigation of police brutality against protesters, and the unconditional release and exoneration of detainees.
In a surprise announcement last week, Lam formally withdrew the extradition bill, which was also a key demand of the demonstrators. She suspended the bill as the protests escalated during the first month, but ignored calls to fully withdraw the measure.
But activists say the decision to withdraw the extradition bill was too little, too late.
In a speech at a monastery Sunday, Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka Shing urged the city’s political leaders to resolve the matter with students leading the pro-democracy protests, calling them the “masters of our future.”
The Afghan Taliban captured another district in northern Takhar province Monday night — a third to fall into militant control in the province this month. Jawad Hejri, a spokesman for Takhar’s governor, told VOA Afghan security forces retreated from the district center after two days of heavy fighting.
However, provincial officials rejected a Taliban claim of killing 20 security personnel, saying no one was hurt in the attack.
The security forces withdrew to avoid civilian casualties, and reinforcements were being sent from the center of the province, Hejri told Afghan TV channel Tolo News.
Heavy clashes in northern Takhar province have been going on for months and residents had been calling on the central government to provide more support.
Fighting continues in Khwaja Ghar district, which borders the volatile Chah-e-Aab district that fell to the Taliban last week.
Meanwhile Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, claimed Taliban fighters captured Darqad, another district in the province Tuesday morning. His claim was also confirmed by local authorities.
Afghan forces recaptured two districts in neighboring Badakhshan province this week. One of them, Warjod, had been in Taliban control for five years.
Afghanistan is preparing to hold a presidential election on September 28 opposed by the Taliban. They have told the population to stay away from election related activities, including rallies or polling booths.
Earlier this week, U.S. President Donald Trump called off peace negotiations with the Taliban that his special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad had been carrying on for almost a year.
Egypt’s foreign minister on Monday called for more support for neighboring Sudan’s new civilian-led government, including getting it off the U.S. list of countries sponsoring terrorism.
The U.S. named Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1993. In one of its last acts, the Obama administration began a formal process to de-list Sudan. However, this was put on hold when mass protests erupted in December against President Omar al-Bashir’s three-decade rule, which ended when the military ousted him in April.
Sameh Shoukry said Egypt is now working with Washington to end Sudan’s international pariah status. The country has a newly installed government under a power-sharing agreement between the pro-democracy movement and the military, which many feared would cling to power.
Shoukry was the first foreign official to visit Sudan after its new cabinet was sworn in Sunday.
“What the Sudanese people have achieved is a role model,” Shoukry told a joint news conference at the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, alongside the country’s first woman foreign minister, Asmaa Abdalla.
He said Egypt has been working with regional and Western allies to build support for the transitional government and that efforts “to coordinate strongly with the Sudanese government will continue.”
He also met with Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, the head of the sovereign council, and the new prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok.
Sudan says getting off the U.S. state sponsor of terror list is crucial to rebuilding the country and readmitting it into the international economy after years of sanctions.
Prime Minister Hamdok said last week that he’d already held a “long discussion” with the Trump administration on the matter.
He also told a local TV station in August that Sudan needs up to $8 billion in foreign aid in the next two years and another $2 billion deposited as reserves to shore up the plunging local currency.
For years, Egypt’s ties with Sudan were frayed by repeated failures to reach a deal over an upstream Nile dam being built by Ethiopia, and the revival of a longstanding dispute over a border territory held by Cairo and claimed by Khartoum.
Ahmed Hafez, a spokesman for Egypt’s foreign ministry, said negotiations with Ethiopia over its $5 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam were “at the forefront” of Shoukry’s talks in Sudan.
Egypt accused al-Bashir of siding with Ethiopia in the dispute over the soon-to-be-completed dam. Egypt fears the dam could reduce its share of the Nile River which serves as a lifeline for the country’s 100 million people. Previous attempts at resolving the lasting dispute have failed.
Sudan’s Foreign Minister Abdalla said talks did not touch on the dispute over the Egyptian-held border territory known as the Halayeb Triangle, which dates back to British colonial times.
Americans are addicted to snacks, and food experts are paying closer attention to what that might mean for health and obesity.
Eating habits in the U.S. have changed significantly in recent decades, and packaged bars, chips and sweets have spread into every corner of life. In the late 1970s, about 40 percent of American adults said they didn’t have any snacks during the day. By 2007, that figure was just 10 percent.
To get a better handle on the implications of differing eating patterns, U.S. health officials are reviewing scientific research on how eating frequency affects health, including weight gain and obesity. The analysis is intended to gauge the broader spectrum of possibilities, including fasting. But snacking, grazing and “mini meals” are likely to be among the factors considered, given how they have upended the three-meals-a-day model.
Findings could potentially be reflected in the government’s updated dietary guidelines next year, though any definitive recommendations are unlikely.
For public health officials, part of the challenge is that snacking is a broad term that can mean a 100-calorie apple or a 500-calorie Frappuccino. How people adjust what they eat the rest of the day also varies. Snacks may help reduce hunger and overeating at meals, but they can also just push up the total calories someone consumes.
While there’s nothing wrong with snacks per se, they have become much more accessible. It also has become more socially acceptable to snack more places: at work meetings and while walking, driving or shopping for clothes.
“We live in a 24/7 food culture now,” said Dana Hunnes, a senior dietitian at UCLA Medical Center.
To encourage better choices as global obesity rates climb, public health officials have increasingly considered government interventions, including “junk food” taxes.
In Mexico, which has among the highest obesity rates in the world, special taxes on sugary drinks and other foods including some snacks and candies went into effect in 2014.
Last week, a study in the medical journal BMJ said taxing sugary snacks in the United Kingdom could have a bigger impact on obesity rates than a tax on sugary drinks that went into effect last year. While sugary drinks account for 2 percent of average calories in the United Kingdom, sugary snacks like cakes and cookies account for 12 percent, the study said.
Complicating matters, snack options are also continuing to broaden beyond the standard chips and cookies.
“Manufacturers have tried to tap into Americans’ concern for health,” said Paula Johnson, curator of food history at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
Beyond nutrition, health officials should also consider what emotional or mental health benefits might be lost when people move away from meals, said Sophie Egan, who writes about American food culture. Meals can be a time for socially connectivity, she said, while snacks are usually eaten alone. She also noted the growth in snacking may be fueled by the stress of busier lives.
“Who knows how much food is a Band-Aid for those issues,” Egan said.
For their part, food companies have moved to capitalize on Americans’ love of snacks and stretched the definition of the word. Dunkin Donuts’ former CEO has said the chain’s sandwiches should be considered snacks, not lunch. When Hershey bought a meat jerky company, the candy company said it wanted to expand its offerings across the ”snacking continuum ” to include more nutritious options.
Health experts’ recommendations on snacking vary. Children may need more snacks and to eat more frequently. For adults, many dietitians saying what works for one person might not for another.
Hunnes, the UCLA dietitian, recommends sticking to minimally processed options like fruit or nuts when snacking. But she acknowledged the advice could sound like it’s coming from an ivory tower, given the prevalence of packaged snacks.
“They’re just there, and they have a great shelf life,” she said.
Small-scale farmers in Ghana are using drones for crop surveillance in a bid to increase yields and incomes. Farmers’ cooperatives embrace the technology as a step toward efficiency. Some however, feel the technology is too expensive and may shut out poor farmers. Sarah Kimani has the story from Accra.
Jacqueline Stewart has been named host of Turner Classic Movies’ silent movie program “Silent Sunday Nights,” making her the network’s first African American host in its 25 year history.
TCM on Monday announced the hiring of Stewart, a professor of cinema and media studies at the University of Chicago who has specialized in the racial politics of film preservation. She will make her TCM debut on Sunday.
“I hope that as a host at TCM that my presence there will interest a greater diversity of viewers to see what there is to watch,” Stewart said in an interview. “If my presence on TCM gets people interested in film history, especially young people of color, to look at a body of work that they might not think would resonate with them, that’s really important.”
For years after the network’s founding in 1994, Robert Osborne was the sole host on TCM. In 2003, Ben Mankiewicz joined the network. But only recently has TCM expanded the number of personalities that introduce and give context to the classic films that air on its commercial-less network. Last year, Alicia Malone became the first female host on TCM. Also added in recent years were “Noir Alley” hosts Eddie Muller and Dave Karger.
Pola Changnon, senior vice president of marketing, studio production and talent for TCM, says that as TCM has expanded its operations to include an annual film festival and classic movie-themed cruise, the network has needed “a deeper bench” of talent. Changnon said Stewart’s deep knowledge of film history and her engaging way of talking about it made her a natural fit.
“For us, it’s a chance to learn from her, too,” said Changnon. “With classic movies, there are certain assumptions about who got to tell the stories and who was featured in these movies. With Jacqueline’s guidance, we’re going to do more to attend to the Oscar Micheauxs of the world.”
Among the first films Stewart will host on TCM will be 1920’s “Symbol of the Unconquered” by Micheaux, the pioneering African American filmmaker. Also planned is 1912’s “Cleopatra” by the Helen Gardner Picture Players. Gardner was the first actor, male or female, to create her own production company in the U.S.
Stewart, a Chicago native, has dedicated her research toward expanding an understanding and appreciation of film history outside of the largely white lens it is often seen through _ something TCM has sometimes been criticized for contributing to. She has served on the National Film Preservation Board where she is chair of its diversity task force.
Stewart’s 2005 book “Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity” told the often overlooked history of the first black filmmakers. Her South Side Home Movie Project collected an archive of more than 300 home movies from families in the Chicago neighborhood as a way of intimately capturing local African American history.
“It’s important for all viewers of TCM to recognize that expertise comes in many different forms, many different colors,” said Stewart. “I’m especially excited about the kinds of conversations that can emerge because of the unique perspective that I can bring as a host.”
Former Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe’s body will lie in state at two different stadiums in the capital city for three days, the information minister said Monday, but she did not announce where he would be buried on Sunday.
Mugabe, an ex-guerrilla chief who took power in 1980 when the African country shook off white minority rule and ruled for decades, died on Friday at a hospital in Singapore. He was 95.
Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa said in a statement that the government has dispatched Vice President Kembo Mohadi and other senior officials and family members to Singapore to accompany Mugabe’s body home.
The body will arrive in the country “any time on Wednesday,” she said. The body will lie in state at Harare’s Rufaro Stadium and then at the National Sports Stadium, also in the capital, she said.
Mutsvangwa said Mugabe would be buried on Sunday but she did not say where he will be buried, saying more updates will be provided “as more information on the program trickles in.”
Presidential spokesman George Charamba and deputy information minister Energy Mutodi at the weekend said the former authoritarian ruler would be buried at the National Heroes’ Acre, a monumental burial site reserved for people viewed by the ruling ZANU-PF party as having served the country with distinction during and after the 1970s war of independence. Mugabe’s first wife, Sally, is buried at Heroes’ Acre and a vacant plot reserved for the former president is next to her grave.
However, family spokesman Leo Mugabe, a nephew of the former president, said over the weekend that burial arrangements have not yet been finalized. This has prompted speculation of a rift between the government and members of Mugabe’s family, who want him to be buried at his rural home in Kutama, about 85 kilometers (52 miles) southwest of Harare.
Leo Mugabe told reporters that Mugabe had died “a very bitter man” because he felt betrayed by the former political and military leaders who were his allies for close to four decades before they forced him to resign in November, 2017.
He dismissed reports that Mugabe had refused to be buried at the Heroes’ Acre, but also refused to say where the burial will take place.
Nissan Motor Co’s nominating committee will discuss Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa’s resignation and possible successors at a meeting on Monday, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Saikawa has expressed his desire to resign from the troubled automaker and is not “clinging to his chair”, the source said, declining to be identified because the information has not been made public.
The Nikkei newspaper earlier reported that Saikawa told reporters on Monday he wanted to “pass the baton” to the next generation as soon as possible. The executive has come under pressure since admitting last week to being improperly compensated.
A charity ship run by humanitarian groups in the Mediterranean spent a rainy Sunday searching open waters for a fragile rubber boat overloaded with migrants before finally plucking 50 people to safety not far off Libya’s coast.
The Norwegian-flagged Ocean Viking, which is operated jointly by SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders, sent its own boats to pick up a pregnant woman close to full term, 12 minors and 37 men, all from sub-Saharan Africa.
“God bless you!” one of the men told the rescuers as they passed life vests to the wet and barefoot passengers.
At least two people feeling ill collapsed upon arrival on the Ocean Viking, while three others were soaked in fuel and two were suffering from mild hypothermia. The operation was witnessed by an Associated Press journalist aboard the ship, which found the migrant boat some 14 nautical miles (16 statute miles) from Libya.
The rescue occurred 14 hours after the Ocean Viking as well as Libyan, Italian and Maltese authorities, the United Nations’ refugee agency and Moonbird, a humanitarian observation plane, received an email by Alarm Phone, a hotline for migrants. It was an urgent call seeking help for the rubber boat carrying 50 people without a working engine.
The Ocean Viking, which was already in the Libyan search and rescue zone of the central Mediterranean, informed all authorities that it was beginning an active search for the migrant boat. Throughout the morning, the charity ship chased several objects spotted on the horizon, including what turned out to be a floating palm leaf tangled with fishing gear and an empty small fishing boat.
Throughout the morning, the ship tried to contact Libyan officials without success. The AP journalist witnessed at least three phone calls to the Libyan Joint Rescue and Coordination Center that went unanswered.
The blue rubber boat jammed with the migrants was finally spotted on the horizon near a fishing boat at 1:30 p.m. The fishing boat did not respond to radio contact by the Ocean Viking, which then launched its rescue boats.
At 2:30 p.m., the Libyan Coastguard finally answered the phone and the Ocean Viking reported that its crew was in the process of rescuing the migrants.
A European Union plane taking part in the Operation Sophia anti-human trafficking operation flew over the Ocean Viking, the migrant boat and the fishing boat multiple times shortly before the people were rescued.
As required by maritime law, the ship asked Libyan authorities responsible for rescue coordination in that part of the Mediterranean to provide a place of safety to disembark the rescued migrants, but it also made the same request to Italian and Maltese officials. There was no immediate response.
International migration and human rights bodies say Libya is not a place of safety, and Doctors Without Borders does not consider any North African country safe for disembarkation of the migrants.
But for more than a year, migrant rescues performed by non-governmental groups have frequently led to sometimes weeks-long standoffs trying to get European authorities to allow migrants to be landed.