Pelican Press

Trump administration eyes release of Hur interview blocked by Biden – Politico Trump administration eyes release of Hur interview blocked by Biden – Politico Trump administration eyes release of Hur interview blocked by Biden Politico Source link #Trump #administration #eyes #release #Hur #interview #blocked #Biden #Politico Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

‘Talk is cheap’, coach demands action from his Waratahs ‘Talk is cheap’, coach demands action from his Waratahs Pulling no punches, coach Dan McKellar has laid down the law to his NSW Waratahs ahead of a do-or-die Super Rugby Pacific derby with the Queensland Reds. McKellar is promising no Churchillian speeches before Friday night’s showdown in Sydney, saying his charges should already know what is expected after last week’s 40-17 submission to the ACT Brumbies. The sobering defeat in Canberra, a fifth from five away games this spluttering campaign, has left the Tahs in third-last spot and prompted McKellar to ring some six changes to the starting team for the must-win encounter at Allianz Stadium. “It’s Queensland versus NSW so I said to the forwards earlier on, ‘If you need motivation for this game, if you need me to give you something to get you up for this game, then we should change occupations’,” McKellar said after Thursday’s captain’s run. “So it’s a big game and it’s important in terms of the context of our season and it’s Queensland versus NSW, so we get stuck into it. “I was pretty angry after the Brumbies performance, just the second half in particular. “The players needed to know that, and they were pretty disappointed as well.”But the beauty of this game is, you get the opportunity to respond pretty quickly.”Talk is cheap now. It’s all about our actions.” Among the six casualties from the Brumbies drubbing was lock Hugh Sinclair, who captained the side during Jake Gordon’s month-long stint out injured. McKellar bristled when asked if Sinclair was merely being rested. “No, we made some changes, mate. We didn’t play well last week so we’ve made some changes,” he said. “It’s pretty simple. Selection is really easy. It’s all about performance.” Flyhalf Lawson Creighton was another victim of the fallout, with Tane Edmed winning back the No.10 jumper for the first time since round two. Edmed finished last season wearing the Wallabies gold in the last Test of 2025 and McKellar commended the 24-year-old’s professionalism during his two months warming the bench, or worse, not even making the Waratahs’ match-day 23. “Great attitude. Great attitude at club training. Excellent, and that’s all important,” the coach said. “In times of adversity, you watch how players react to it and respond and he’s been good and, off the back of that, he stays at the forefront of your mind. “If they drop their bottom lip and sulk and don’t want to be good team members, then you don’t have a lot of thought for that. “So he’s been excellent in how he’s handled himself, so he’ll be excited to get an opportunity this week.” With Noah Lolesio heading to Japan at season’s end, Brumbies coach Stephen Larkham is said to be eyeing off Edmed as a replacement playmaker in the ACT. McKellar, though, issued a polite hands off, with Edmed also very much in the Waratahs’ future plans. “A NSW boy, loves the Waratahs and his family’s here and that sort of thing. So, yeah, the retention of all of our players is the first thing that we look at before we recruit,” McKeller said. “So he’s certainly in the conversation.” Also coming off a loss, to the Fijian Drua in Suva, the fourth-placed Reds enter the pivotal match seven points ahead of the Waratahs and with the chance to kill off their arch rivals’ finals hopes. Source link #Talk #cheap #coach #demands #action #Waratahs Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Family’s last desperate attempt to escape erupting Vesuvius unearthed in Pompeii Family’s last desperate attempt to escape erupting Vesuvius unearthed in Pompeii When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Remains of the bed the family had attempted to use to barricade a door closed during the eruption of Vesuvius. | Credit: Archaeological Park of Pompeii Archaeologists have unearthed heartbreaking evidence of a family’s last-ditch attempts to flee from the incoming destruction during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. During a recent excavation of a house in Pompeii, the remains of four people, including a child, were discovered alongside a bed that had been moved to block a bedroom door in what was likely the family’s final endeavor to escape the searing hot ash, gas and dust that enveloped the city. The findings were published April 30 in the online e-journal Scavi di Pompei. “In this small, wonderfully decorated house, we found traces of the inhabitants who tried to save themselves, blocking the entrance to a small room with a bed,” Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Archeological Park of Pompeii, said in a statement translated from Italian. The eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79 is one of the most catastrophic volcanic events in history, having famously destroyed the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum lying in its foothills. Vesuvius is a stratovolcano, a type known for having extremely violent eruptions due to its magma containing higher levels of gas. This results in much greater pressures building up beneath the ground, and consequently more explosive eruptions. When Vesuvius first exploded, it sent a massive column of ash and volcanic rock into the air, which rained heavily down onto the nearby towns, collapsing roofs and suffocating residents. Then, a series of pyroclastic flows (fast-moving, extremely hot avalanches of gas, ash and volcanic debris) swept down the mountain, incinerating and burying everything in their path and leaving the towns’ inhabitants buried in a tomb of ash. Related: Pompeii victims aren’t who we thought they were, DNA analysis reveals Pompeii was buried under about 20 feet (6 meters) of volcanic material after the eruption. The city was then lost to time, until its rediscovery over a millennium later. Pompeii and Herculaneum have been extensively examined by archaeologists since excavations officially began in the 1700s, uncovering buildings, frescoes, belongings and human remains. Image 1 of 4 human bones and skulls in the dirt The remains of one of the people who lived in the house. Image 2 of 4 remains of a bed against a wal in a room filled with soot and dirt Remains of the bed the family had attempted to use to barricade a door closed during the eruption of Vesuvius. Image 3 of 4 a wall painting of a boy with wings and a ram The painting of Helle and Phrixus for which the house is named. Image 4 of 4 wall paintings More painting on the walls of the house. Barricaded door The house in the new study, named casa di Elle e Frisso, or the house of Helle and Phrixus, was named for a mythological painting found in one of its rooms, depicting the twins Phrixus and Helle fleeing from their stepmother on a magical ram with a golden fleece, before Helle fell to her death in the waters below. The house of Helle and Phrixus was first found in 2019 during excavations of a neighboring site called the House of Leda and the Swan. In this most recent excavation of the house of Helle and Phrixus, which unearthed the room with the bed barricade, a number of other details were found in the home, including a water basin, a banquet hall, and a room with a hole in its roof to collect rainwater. They also discovered a bronze amulet or “bulla,” likely worn by the child, as well as a number of drinking vessels, storage vessels, bronze scales and bronze cooking pans. The archaeologists created a cast of the bed that the family had used in an attempt to protect themselves from the deluge of ash, likely through the hole in the roof. “This is because the lapilli, the volcanic stones that risked invading the space, entered through the opening in the roof of the atrium,” Zuchtriegel said. “They didn’t make it, in the end the pyroclastic flow arrived, a violent flow of very hot ash that filled here, as elsewhere, every room, the seismic shocks had already caused many buildings to collapse.” RELATED STORIES —4,000-year-old footprints near Pompeii show people fleeing Mount Vesuvius eruption thousands of years before the famous one —Rare fresco discovered in Pompeii shows type of woman who ‘breaks free from male order to dance freely, go hunting and eat raw meat in the mountains’ —Pompeii victims died in ‘extreme agony,’ 2 newfound skeletons reveal Due to the absence of a number of decorations and other elements archaeologists might have expected to find in the home, they suggest that the family may have been in the process of renovating their house at the time of the eruption. The presence of the fresco of Phrixus and Helle, as well as the medium-size home, indicates that the family were middle or upper class in Roman society. “Excavating and visiting Pompeii means coming face to face with the beauty of art but also with the precariousness of our lives,” Zuchtriegel said. Pompeii quiz: How much do you know about the Roman town destroyed by Mount Vesuvius? Source link #Familys #desperate #attempt #escape #erupting #Vesuvius #unearthed #Pompeii Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Thunder set NBA playoff record with 87 points in 1st half vs. Nuggets in Game 2 – NBA Thunder set NBA playoff record with 87 points in 1st half vs. Nuggets in Game 2 – NBA Thunder set NBA playoff record with 87 points in 1st half vs. Nuggets in Game 2 NBAThunder 149-106 Nuggets (May 7, 2025) Game Recap ESPNNuggets Podcast: Aaron Gordon, Nikola Jokic and Denver’s Game 1 stunner in Oklahoma City The Denver PostLed by ‘Mr. Nugget,’ Denver shows it won’t go down quietly against the Thunder – The Athletic The New York TimesOKC Thunder Bounce Back, Route Denver Nuggets in Game 2 Sports Illustrated Source link #Thunder #set #NBA #playoff #record #points #1st #Nuggets #Game #NBA Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Power for millions of homes in major clean energy call Power for millions of homes in major clean energy call Enough wind, solar and batteries to power 2.7 millions of homes at peak generation have been given the go-ahead to connect to new power lines. Clean energy and storage projects totalling more than 7.15 gigawatts capacity have been granted access to the renewable energy zone in NSW’s central west. The agreements are enough to power more than half the homes in Australia’s most populous state by 2031, during peak periods, as it winds down dependence on coal. NSW Climate Change and Energy Minister Penny Sharpe said the Central-West Orana renewable energy zone connections would secure billions of dollars of private investment. “By unlocking new renewable capacity and enhancing battery storage, we are making our power grid more reliable and putting downward pressure on bills.” Governments identify zones for big renewables projects to plan efficiently for the poles and wires needed to transport the electricity to homes and businesses. Projects must have access rights before they can connect to transmission infrastructure. NSW Nationals leader Dugald Saunders said the new connections “miss the mark”. “It’s all well and good to acknowledge 10 projects have now got an access agreement. But there’s no recognition of the dozens of other projects in the region that don’t, and which continue to cause anger and unrest,” he said. He said there were somewhere between 50 and 60 projects proposed for the Central-West Orana renewable energy zone and most of those were looking at tapping into existing powerlines. “The cumulative impact is not being taken into consideration in any way, shape, or form by this government,” he said. Clean energy proponents celebrated Thursday’s announcement, which followed a resounding election win for Federal Labor committed to chasing its 82 per cent renewable energy target. Climate Councillor and energy expert Greg Bourne said NSW was making progress on its energy transition by strategically building out connections between projects and transmission infrastructure via renewable energy zones. “Growing our wind and solar generation capacity is integral to fortifying Australia’s energy mix as polluting coal use declines,” he said. NSW’s biggest power station, the Origin Energy-owned 2.88-gigawatt Eraring plant, was set to close this year but that was delayed for two years under a deal with the state government to avoid potential power shortages and price spikes. The latest numbers from the *********** Energy Market Operator had renewables contributing 43 per cent of energy mix to the main grid in the first three months of 2025, up from 39 per cent over same ******* in 2024. Source link #Power #millions #homes #major #clean #energy #call Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

A US Navy aircraft carrier in the Red Sea fight just lost a third Super Hornet. The $60 million jet went overboard on landing. A US Navy aircraft carrier in the Red Sea fight just lost a third Super Hornet. The $60 million jet went overboard on landing. An F/A-18 fighter jet went overboard after trying to land on the USS Harry S. Truman on Tuesday. It’s the second Super Hornet the Truman has lost in just over a week and the third of this deployment. F/A-18s are estimated to cost roughly $60 million apiece. Another F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet fell off the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and into the Red Sea on Tuesday, a US defense official confirmed to Business Insider. It’s the second fighter jet lost from the Truman in a little over a week and the third of the carrier’s deployment. Super Hornets are estimated to cost roughly $60 million apiece. The F/A-18F was landing on the flight deck of the Truman on Tuesday when the arrestment failed, causing the fighter jet to go overboard, the official said. Both the aviators safely ejected and were rescued by an MH-60S Seahawk helicopter. Navy aircraft carriers have catapults for launch and arresting gear for recovery. The thick cables help aircraft quickly decelerate on landing. It’s unclear what exactly failed during Tuesday’s recovery. “The aviators were evaluated by medical personnel and assessed to have minor injuries,” the official said, adding that “no flight deck personnel were injured.” The Truman has lost three F/A-18s since December.US Navy photo CNN first reported on the incident, which was the latest in a series of mishaps for Truman and its strike group. On April 28, an F/A-18E and a tow tractor fell off the Truman and into the Red Sea after a move crew lost control of the aircraft. A sailor who jumped from the cockpit just before the fighter jet went overboard was lightly hurt. In February, the Truman collided with a large commercial vessel in the Mediterranean Sea, resulting in the firing of the carrier’s commanding officer. And in December, the missile cruiser USS Gettysburg, part of the Truman’s strike group, shot down a Super Hornet in what the US military described as “an apparent case of friendly fire.” Both aviators ejected safely. The Truman has been deeply involved in combat operations against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. But Tuesday’s incident came as President Donald Trump said the US would end a seven-week intensive bombing campaign against the rebels. Read the original article on Business Insider Source link #Navy #aircraft #carrier #Red #Sea #fight #lost #Super #Hornet #million #jet #overboard #landing Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Trump: US leader teases trade deal with 'highly respected country' – BBC Trump: US leader teases trade deal with 'highly respected country' – BBC Trump: US leader teases trade deal with ‘highly respected country’ BBCBritain set to become the first country to sign a trade deal with U.S., The New York Times reports CNBCTrump is set to announce his first trade deal since his tariffs sent markets reeling NPRTrump to Announce Trade Agreement With Britain WSJTrump wants everyone to stop asking when trade deals are coming NBC News Source link #Trump #leader #teases #trade #deal #039highly #respected #country039 #BBC Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Luxury bridal house Pallas Couture collapses for a second time amid tough retail trading conditions Luxury bridal house Pallas Couture collapses for a second time amid tough retail trading conditions Luxury bridal house Pallas Couture has collapsed into administration for a second time in less than eight years, but customers have been assured they will still receive their wedding dresses. Source link #Luxury #bridal #house #Pallas #Couture #collapses #time #tough #retail #trading #conditions Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Sudden Change in Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ Appearance Surprises Observers Sudden Change in Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ Appearance Surprises Observers The sudden change in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ appearance has surprised observers of his New York trial. The trial is not being televised and cameras are not allowed in the courtroom, but reporters have described Combs as looking very different from how the public remembers him. He has been in jail for months. According to The Daily Beast, Combs has aged “markedly” following seven months in jail, with his “hair and goatee” now “going white.” The Daily Beast described Combs as looking like “the slightly pudgy uncle” of the man he used to be even just two years before, when he attended the Met Gala. A courtroom sketch artist drew Combs in court on May 5 and 6 as a bespectacled man with graying hair and a goatee. The trial started with two days of jury selection, which is ongoing. Combs “retained reasonably good posture, and remained alert and attentive,” Daily Beast reported. The New York Daily News also noted Combs’ sudden change in appearance, reporting that the incarceration appears to have taken a “toll” on the music mogul, who now has a “full head of gray-white hair.” This might be due to a lack of hair dye in jail, the publication noted. Combs was clad in “a dark sweater and white button-down shirt,” The Daily News reported. On the first day of the trial, Combs admitted that he was nervous. A lot is at stake for the rapper, whose white parties once drew top celebrities. The federal indictment accuses Combs of having engaged in or attempting to engage in sex trafficking, obstructing justice, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, and bribery, the indictment says. Related: Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Makes Unexpected 9-Word Statement in Court Source link #Sudden #Change #Sean #Diddy #Combs #Appearance #Surprises #Observers Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Trump is set to announce his first trade deal since his tariffs sent markets reeling – NPR Trump is set to announce his first trade deal since his tariffs sent markets reeling – NPR Trump is set to announce his first trade deal since his tariffs sent markets reeling NPRBritain set to become the first country to sign a trade deal with U.S., The New York Times reports CNBCUS Trump teases trade deal with ‘highly respected country’ BBCAsian Stocks Start Cautiously After Fed Holds Rate: Markets Wrap Bloomberg.comTrump wants everyone to stop asking when trade deals are coming NBC News Source link #Trump #set #announce #trade #deal #tariffs #markets #reeling #NPR Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

West Coast Training Notes: Co-captains Liam Duggan, Oscar Allen raise concerns ahead of Richmond clash West Coast Training Notes: Co-captains Liam Duggan, Oscar Allen raise concerns ahead of Richmond clash West Coast are preparing to travel to the mighty MCG to take on Richmond as they seek their first win of 2025. Here’s what we saw on the track on Thursday morning. Source link #West #Coast #Training #Notes #Cocaptains #Liam #Duggan #Oscar #Allen #raise #concerns #ahead #Richmond #clash Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Seagulls Roosting on Sistine Chapel Roof End Up with VIP Seats to Papal Conclave Seagulls Roosting on Sistine Chapel Roof End Up with VIP Seats to Papal Conclave The Sistine Chapel seagulls are becoming the stars of the 2025 papal conclave. The livestream of the historic event, which began in the early morning hours of Wednesday, May 7, panned to a flock of seagulls perched on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, including an adorable fluffy seagull chick, to the delight of viewers watching from home. The birds stuck around for the secretive voting process, but appeared to clear out at 3 p.m. ET, when the cardinals expelled ****** smoke from the chimney to indicate that a decision on the next pope is yet to be made, per USA Today. Social media users shared humorous reactions to the scene of the curious seagulls. “This seagull is all of us rn,” LifeSite Catholic wrote in a post on X. “Shoutout to that one seagull locked in on the Conclave proceedings,” Father Cassidy Stinson wrote on X. Alistair Bruce of Sky News and ABC shared a video of the whole seagull family, writing on X, “our #Conclave distraction … seagull family on our roof in Rome.” Another user wrote excitedly on X, “ONE OF THE CONCLAVE SEAGULLS BROUGHT A BABY SEAGULL.” The conclave seagulls appear to be a tradition. Several X accounts with posts dating back to 2013, during the conclave that ended with Pope Francis’ election, documented seagulls visiting the ********. The live stream of the ongoing election among the College of Cardinals to select the late Pope Francis‘ successor has captured the attention of thousands of viewers online. The first pope from Latin America died on Monday, April 21, at 88. Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. On Wednesday, May 7, only one vote was held among the College of Cardinals. Cardinals will be eligible to vote twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon going forward, the ******** confirmed. Cardinals under the age of 80 compose the voting body of the College of Cardinals eligible to vote for the 267th pope. ****** smoke released from the Sistine Chapel indicates that voting is ongoing, while white smoke indicates that a new pope has been selected. The College of Cardinals is sequestered from the outside world throughout the papal election, in a process well documented in the 2024 film Conclave. The conclave typically begins 15 to 20 days after the death of a pope, and takes as long as needed. Pope Francis was elected after only one day of voting. He was the first Latin American pope and held openly progressive views on immigration and the LGBTQ+ community. ******** Media via ******** Pool/Getty Meeting of the College of Cardinals in the Sistine Chapel. Kathleen Sprows Cummings, a Pope Francis expert and professor of American Studies and History at the University of Notre Dame, previously spoke to PEOPLE regarding the process, which dates back to the 13th century. “So, the proceedings of the conclave are secret,” Cummings told PEOPLE. She elaborated that “invariably things leak out,” citing the meeting that led to Francis’ papacy over a decade ago. The conclave is livestreamed daily on YouTube on the ********’s official account. Read the original article on People Source link #Seagulls #Roosting #Sistine #Chapel #Roof #VIP #Seats #Papal #Conclave Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Cardinals set for second day of conclave to elect a new pope – Reuters Cardinals set for second day of conclave to elect a new pope – Reuters Cardinals set for second day of conclave to elect a new pope ReutersWhen does the 2025 conclave resume? Smoke times, full schedule for May 8 USA TodayBlack smoke rises from the Sistine Chapel as cardinals cast an unsuccessful first vote NPRFood for the Cardinals at the Conclave Is ‘Not So Good’ The New York TimesMass. school dean among tens of thousands at conclave, no pope chosen WCVB Source link #Cardinals #set #day #conclave #elect #pope #Reuters Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Cringe! How millennials became uncool | Young people Cringe! How millennials became uncool | Young people Her right to a naked ankle is, in the end, the hill Natalie Ormond is willing to die on. Ormond, a millennial, simply cannot – will not – get her head around gen Z’s fondness for a crew sock, pulled up over gym leggings or skimming bare legs, brazenly extending over the ankle towards the lower calf. “I stand by trainer socks and I won’t budge,” says the 43-year-old. “The more invisible the sock, the better.” A proclivity for socks hidden within low-top trainers is just one reason why millennials – anyone born between 1981-1996 – are now considered achingly uncool by the generation that came next: gen Z, AKA the zoomers, or zillennials. According to countless TikTok videos, other sources of derision for the generation that first popularised social media, millennial pink, and pumpkin-spice lattes are their choice of jeans (skinny and mom jeans are out; baggy hipsters are in); an obsession with avocado on toast (gen Z’s green grub of choice is matcha); their excessive use of the crying laughing face emoji (for a zoomer, the skull emoji indicates humour, representing phrases such as “I’m dying with laughter”); and the “millennial pause”, a brief moment of silence at the start of a millennial’s video or voice note, thought to be because – and this really does make them sound ancient – they like to check the device they’re using is actually recording. Millennials, typically self-deprecating, tend to join in, poking fun at themselves under the hashtags like #millennialsoftiktok. Avocado on toast … millennials’ green grub of choice. Photograph: Ekaterina Budinovskaya/Getty Images All of which is to say that, in recent years, millennials, the former hip young things that once seemed so cutting edge when cast side-by-side with the out-of-touch baby boomers and the rather nondescript generation X, have become, well, a bit cringe. I say this as an (uncool) millennial myself. Born in 1991, I, like many millennials, remember a time before tech took over: I didn’t get a phone (mobile not smart) until I was in my final year of secondary school; I wasn’t on Facebook – then a social media site populated by my friends, rather than my friends’ mums – until I was at sixth form; and remember when Netflix used to post out physical DVDs. But being a millennial hasn’t always been easy. We’ve been called lazy, entitled and overly sensitive. Older generations have, typically, ignored the reality of stagnant wages, student debt and rising house prices and blamed our apparent poor financial habits – and penchant for brunch – for being unable to get on the property ladder. But, I’ll confess, being part of a generation that felt so progressive compared with its predecessors, bridging the gap between analogue and digital, felt significant, essential, and yes, bloody cool, actually. It’s a shock, then, to wake up one morning and realise you’ve been usurped. Matcha latte … gen Z’s green grub of choice Photograph: Baoyan Zeng/Getty Images Some millennials are digging their heels in, resistant to their new status; 37-year-old Lily Saujani feels particularly affronted. “It’s ridiculous. We have been judged by the younger generation who think they have invented everything,” she says. “But really, they are just wearing what we wore in our teen years.” Saujani says she first felt uncool when she was scrolling TikTok (an app invented by a millennial, incidentally) and saw that being born before 1992 was considered old. “There’s definitely an unspoken – but sometimes spoken – competition between the generations on TikTok. And yes, I do feel old when I’ve been on it,” she says, before adding, in a very millennial way: “But my dogs have gone viral a few times.” In fact, much of the ire provoked by gen Z’s teasing is driven by a sense that the younger generation are merely jumping on a cool and trendy bandwagon built by millennials. “We paved the way for gen Z to be killing it on TikTok with our ******* Myspace accounts and MSN-ing each other from our university bedrooms,” says 41-year-old Lizzie Cernik, who believes millennials have a strong work ethic and are “tough cookies”. Meanwhile, Ormond – the trainer sock fan – set up sustainable family store Smallkind in 2019 and is keen to stress that gen Z, famously environmentally conscious, had their eco-friendly way paved for them by millennials who got there first. But when did this discernible shift from cool to uncool happen? Cernik posits that the pandemic was the turning point. “Many older millennials (myself included) were coming to the end of our party era around the time of lockdown,” she says. “The pandemic accelerated that and when we emerged from lockdown, gen Z had taken over fashion culture with new trends.” Beauty editor and influencer Laura Pearson – who is 40 but claims she feels no older than 25 – agrees, saying she noticed an online shift during Covid. “The internet had been my space before and now there was this whole wave of new people with no experience or credibility being able to build careers on Instagram and TikTok.” Still, Pearson, who adds that she stays relevant by surrounding herself with gen Z friends, says she refuses to be defined by a word. “If someone is embarrassed by being called a millennial, they’re giving a word far too much power.” Of course, generation bashing is nothing new – in fact, one could argue it’s yet another thing millennials invented, coining, in the late 2010s, the phrase “OK boomer” to dismiss attitudes associated with baby boomers. But, inevitably, this latest generational warfare, fought by the two cohorts most comfortable online, has a very public battleground: the internet. Illustration: Edith Pritchett/The Guardian Dr Carolina Are, social media researcher at Northumbria University’s Centre for Digital Citizens, says most gen Z conversations about millennials being uncool happen online. Are, herself a millennial, suggests that the two generations’ different approaches to existing online is often what makes millennials seem unfashionable to younger people. “Being online always means mediating oneself through an app or platform, meaning that real authenticity is hard to come by, even for those who claim to be ‘no filter’,” she says. “However, while millennials went through years of polished feeds and aesthetics, only showing our best highlight reels and caring about our online persona, gen Z seem to have settled on aesthetics that are a form of understated and chaotic curation. While some of these are great – for example, the ‘goblin mode’ rejection of anything polished – they are still aesthetics, and denying that pursuing them has an aim (content creation is a lucrative business and aspiration even for gen Z) would be disingenuous.” When I approach my gen Z brothers and their friends for clarification on what makes millennials uncool (a humbling experience; apparently even my over-cheery message inviting comments was “very millennial”), one thing that stands out is the way in which we curate our lives. Selfies, for example. My generation takes selfies using the front-facing camera and a downward angle, the photographer’s face, large and grinning, in the corner of the shot. Gen Z, it seems, favours the back camera and the volume button, using the 0.5x lens option to create a wide-angled picture with the snapper’s giant distorted arm protruding from the bottom of the frame. While millennial selfies have a certain gloss to them – a quick glance at my own album shows me and my friends leaning in, drinks in hand, stiff and still and self-conscious as we gaze at our own faces – those taken by the younger generation seem more joyful, more self-assured, more spontaneous, more intentionally unflattering. What’s more, the fact we still take selfies at any given opportunity (I’ve recently taken them at the park, at the pub, while breastfeeding, and mid-run) reveals something else intrinsically uncool about millennials. “Gen Z users seem to be embracing the chaos of our world a lot more, while also being aware of the harms of social media,” says Are. “The fact that millennials may still post a lot, or care about the way they’re perceived, or attempt to keep a professional or polished facade, may appear uncool to them.” Selfies, the gen Z way. Photograph: Stephen Zeigler/Getty Images Maybe, too, the ribbing that gen Z gives millennials is down to our different senses of humour, driven by our lived experiences. While millennial humour is, typically, self-deprecating and relatable, gen Z are more absurdist, ironic, and meta. (Millennials would make a meme; gen Z would make a joke about a meme.) My 25-year-old brother puts gen Z’s edge down to a combination of factors: social media, a job market still feeling the effects of 2008, climate anxiety, ridiculous house prices, and a stream of negative and polarised news. “It’s all played a part in gen Z being not just more ironic and absurdist, but also more cynical and a bit angry. There’s a vibe of: if I don’t laugh, I’ll cry.” Perhaps, of course, it’s simply that the mantle of cool has passed to the next generation and we millennials need to get over it. Sam Harrington-Lowe, the 55-year-old founder and editor of Silver Magazine, a publication for “the generation X-ers and beyond”, says generation X (those born between 1965-80) are “undeniably the coolest generation” because, she says, they don’t care. “The thing about being cool or not is about whether you care about it,” she says. “The reason why ‘OK boomer’ hits so hard stems from the delight in firing up a boomer’s outrage. It’s hilarious! And calling millennials uncool is shooting fish in a barrel.” One millennial who doesn’t care and is – at least in the opinion of this millennial – effortlessly cool as a result is culture journalist and author Daisy Jones, 32. Jones, who studied at Goldsmiths (cool) and writes for Vogue (also cool), doesn’t have a single brunch selfie or cute dog picture on her Instagram grid, on which she has only posted 27 times since 2019 (extremely cool). “I’m personally of the belief that ‘coolness’ doesn’t come from trying hard or caring too much,” she says. “Being constantly obsessed with what’s on trend, or how you’re coming across, or whether you’re cringe or not isn’t very interesting to me. I also never take style advice – or any advice, actually – off TikTok.” Jones adds that, given her followers are around her age, they have the same cultural reference points. “It would be a bit weird if I started acting and dressing like a 19-year-old or pretending that I don’t remember LimeWire or 9/11.” The only thing that does bug her about the generation below is the sense she gets that they think they were the first ones to grow up on the internet. “I wasn’t, like, collecting conkers at age 12,” she says. “I was on Myspace.” Really, it’s impossible to define cool; what’s cool to me won’t necessarily be cool to you. Perhaps, then, there’s hope for the much-maligned millennials: if we think we’re cool, does anything – or anyone – else matter? Perhaps we should all be more like Ormond and wear trainer socks, if we want. “As you get older, it matters less and you have more of a sense of who you are,” she tells me. “That’s probably the coolest thing about being a millennial right now.” Source link #Cringe #millennials #uncool #Young #people Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Massacre order poster on coloniser statue in court test Massacre order poster on coloniser statue in court test Pasting a piece of paper to a controversial former governor’s statue is not protected by freedom of political communication, a judge has ruled. Activist Stephen Langford stuck a piece of A4 paper with former NSW governor Lachlan Macquarie’s 1816 order to imprison and kill First Australians on a statue of the man himself located in Hyde Park. The message stuck on the statue quoted from the order and read “all Aborigines from Sydney onwards are to be made prisoners of war and if they resist they are to be shot and their bodies to be hung from trees in the most conspicuous places near where they fall so as to strike fear into the hearts of surviving natives”. Langford had been found guilty on seven charges of affixing a placard or paper on premises without consent at the Downing Centre Local Court, before appealing that verdict. But Judge Christine Mendes dismissed that appeal in the District Court on Thursday, declaring an implied constitutional right of freedom of political communication did not mean the law could be ignored. Archival records show Macquarie’s military actions included the slaughter of Aboriginal people including women and children, with little regard for human life or the rules of combat. Yet the statue describes him as a “perfect gentleman”. Langford said the court decision was “unsatisfactory” and he remained “enraged” by the statue. “There remains rubbish information on the statue, it’s just lauding him,” he told AAP. “I’m not saying he was the worst in the world … but on a statue you have the truth, not bloody bollocks.” Judge Mendes found free political communication did not deny lawmakers the right to sanction trespassers in order to protect public property. But she accepted his rights had been burdened by the law and acknowledged his stance as “commendable”. “For many citizens, Mr Langford’s interest in raising public awareness about the legacy of Australia’s colonial history and the absence of First Nations perspectives of history in the public domain is highly commendable,” Judge Mendes said. Wiradjuri woman Yvonne Weldon, the first Aboriginal councillor in the City of Sydney’s 180-year history, said she stood with Langford and commended his advocacy. “There is not a single publicly funded statue commemorating a First Nations person in the City of Sydney … meanwhile there are more than two dozen statues around the city centre commemorating colonial figures,” she said. “This imbalance is unacceptable and it reflects the erasure of First Nations history, culture and perspectives more broadly.” In 2023, Cr Weldon pushed for a review of inscriptions on 25 statues to address offensive descriptions of colonial figures’ deeds. But Langford said no council action had followed. “Nothing has happened, that’s my main beef,” he said. “It’s meant to be democratic what we have at town hall … I’m asking them to put the truth on the statues.” Lilli Barto, who was one of a group of supporters with Langford in court, said the outcome showed the priorities of the “colonial legal system”. “The state would rather expend months worth of police resources and court resources prosecuting a man over a glue stick and a bit of paper … than to just change the plaque on the statue and actually acknowledge the violence,” she told AAP. Judge Mendes dismissed Langford’s charges without conviction. Source link #Massacre #order #poster #coloniser #statue #court #test Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

‘Outdated and unjust’: can we reform global capitalism? | Trump tariffs ‘Outdated and unjust’: can we reform global capitalism? | Trump tariffs Since Donald Trump launched his chaotic trade war earlier this year, it has become a truism to say he has plunged the world economy into crisis. At last month’s spring meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, where policymakers and finance ministers from all over congregated, the attenders were “shellshocked”, the economist Eswar Prasad, a former senior IMF official who now teaches at Cornell, told me. “The sense is that the world has changed fundamentally in ways that cannot easily be put back together. Every country has to figure out its own place in this new world order and how to protect its own interests.” Trump’s assault on the old global order is real. But in taking its measure, it’s necessary to look beyond the daily headlines and acknowledge that being in a state of crisis is nothing new to capitalism. It’s also important to note that, as Karl Marx wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.” Even would-be authoritarians who occupy the Oval Office have to operate in the social, economic and political environment that is bequeathed to them. In Trump’s case, the inheritance was one in which global capitalism was already suffering from a crisis of legitimacy. Consider the decade before he was re-elected. In 2014, the global financial crisis and the Occupy Wall Street movement were fresh in the memory. The French economist Thomas Piketty appeared on bestseller lists around the world with his tome Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which highlighted income and wealth inequality. Bankers, billionaires and defenders of free market capitalism appeared to be on the defensive. “Nobody believes any more in a moral revival of capitalism,” wrote the ******* sociologist Wolfgang Streeck in the New Left Review. The “attempt to prevent it from being confounded with greed has finally failed, as it has more than ever become synonymous with corruption.” UN secretary general Antonio Guterres in April. Photograph: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images Move forward nine years to September 2023, and the 78th general assembly of the United Nations. “Our world is becoming unhinged,” António Guterres, the UN’s secretary general, declared. “Geopolitical tensions are rising. Global challenges are mounting. And we seem incapable of coming together to respond.” Guterres, a former prime minister of Portugal, mentioned the war in Ukraine and military coups in the Sahel, but the core challenges he cited were more systemic: inequality, rising debt levels, authoritarianism, financial architecture that was “dysfunctional, outdated and unjust”, and “the most immediate threat to our future: our overheating planet”. If the world didn’t tackle these issues quickly, Guterres warned, it faced the prospect of “a great fracture in economic systems and financial systems and trade relations.” Declarations that global capitalism is in crisis are nothing new, of course. Ever since Marx and Engels’ ********** Manifesto, which appeared in 1848, critics have been predicting the system’s demise. In the 1940s, two of capitalism’s biggest champions – the Austrian free market economists Friedrich Hayek and Joseph Schumpeter – also argued that it was doomed. (To them, the fatal threats were socialism and bureaucracy.) During the post-second world war decades, many western countries moved in the direction of Keynesian social democracy, which was based on a social bargain between labour and capital, with restraints on the movement of financial capital. In the 1970s, this form of managed capitalism succumbed to what’s known as stagflation, the combination of high inflation and stagnant economic growth. This was replaced with the neoliberal experiment in unrestricted financialisation and globalisation that met its nemesis in the global financial crisis of 2008-09. Since then, we have been in an interregnum characterised by the dominance of big tech, an intensifying climate crisis, a global pandemic and efforts across the political spectrum to imagine a new economic paradigm. Even in the United States, where the mythology of private enterprise runs deep and movements hostile to capitalism have long struggled to attract mass support, public attitudes have been changed. A 2023 opinion poll found that “almost half of Americans, regardless of generation and race, say that capitalism is headed on the wrong path”. In the same year, American Compass, a new conservative thinktank based in Washington DC, published a long report entitled Rebuilding American Capitalism: A Handbook for Conservative Policymakers. “What has happened to capitalism in America?” Oren Cass, a Republican policy analyst who worked on Mitt Romney’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, wrote in the introduction. “Businesses still pursue profit, yes, but not in ways that advance the public interest … Globalisation crushed domestic industry and employment, leaving collapsed communities in its wake. Financialisation shifted the economy’s centre of gravity from Main Street to Wall Street, fuelling an explosion in corporate profits alongside stagnating wages and declining investment.” Also in 2023, a report from another conservative American thinktank, the Edmund Burke Foundation, said that “transnational corporations showing little loyalty to any nation damage public life by censoring political speech, flooding the country with dangerous and addictive substances and ************ and promoting obsessive, destructive personal habits”. In some ways, these conservative criticisms echoed what leftists had been saying for generations. In others, they evoked the writings of the 19th-century arch-conservative Thomas Carlyle, who lamented the social degradations of industrial capitalism and described the pursuit of profit at any cost as: “One of the shabbiest gospels ever preached on earth.” Jeff Bezos’s superyacht, Flying Fox, off the coast of Turkey in 2021. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images Conservatives were also having difficulty justifying the emergence of a new plutocracy whose conspicuous consumption evoked the Gilded Age “captains of industry”. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos took possession of a custom-built 417ft-long superyacht that came with a helipad-equipped support vessel and was rumoured to have cost $500m. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg was building a 560-hectare compound in Hawaii that reportedly included a blast-proof underground bunker. It didn’t take great observational powers to realise that Bezos, Zuckerberg and other tech barons were milking vast monopolies that were largely oblivious to competition, and, in the US at least, government oversight. The Covid shutdowns dealt another blow to champions of globalised capitalism by highlighting the dangers of relying on the profit motive to organise the production of vital goods. When the global supply chain froze up, many western countries were left short of items like respiratory masks, diagnostic testing kits, computer chips and baby formula. “The industries at the centre of the supply chain – from shipping and rail to meat processing – had liberated themselves from rules imposed to limit their dominance,” wrote the New York Times journalist Peter S Goodman in his illuminating 2024 book How the World Ran Out of Everything. “They had reprised the era of the robber barons in achieving monopoly status. This had delivered stupendous profits to shareholders while yielding danger and dysfunction for society at large.” Before the start of the pandemic, Trump had spent three years in office sounding off against the “globalists”. Although the trade restrictions he introduced during his first term were small beer compared with what he has unleashed in 2025, the difference can largely be ascribed to the fact that he was less sure of himself back then, and he took more notice of his advisers. But his political brand was built on a rejection of globalisation and free trade, and the institutions that underpinned them. During his 2016 presidential campaign, he labelled Nafta and the World Trade Organization a “disaster” and pledged to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal that the Obama administration had negotiated with 11 Pacific Rim countries. This message resonated with voters who lived in manufacturing areas that had been exposed to cheap foreign competition, particularly from China. In a paper published after the 2016 election, the economists David H Autor, David Dorn, Gordon H Hanson and Kaveh Majlesi said they had identified a link between trade shocks and voting patterns in presidential elections going back to 2000. In areas of the US where there had been rising competition from imports, the Republican candidate gained more votes. China president Xi Jinping with Joe Biden at the G20 summit in Bali, 2022. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters The suggestion that trade and globalisation may have cost the Democrats the 2016 election was hotly disputed. Other studies found that race, religion and other cultural factors played a ******* role than economics in Trump’s victory. But many Democrats interpreted his success as a rebuke of the pro-free trade policies that the party had adopted since the 1990s. When Joe Biden entered the White House in 2021, he left some of Trump’s tariffs in place and introduced an ambitious industrial policy designed to boost US manufacturing and “onshore” production that had moved abroad. In 2024, before he left office, Biden raised some tariffs on ******** goods to a rate of 100%. Biden’s levies were much more targeted than the blanket tariffs Trump has introduced in recent months. But they demonstrated that, at least as far as relations with China went, Washington’s abandonment of the open-trade model of global capitalism reflected a bipartisan consensus. T***** 2.0 represents a melange of populist economic nationalism, Silicon Valley accelerationism and feed-the-rich tax policies that can be traced back to Ronald Reagan. Each of these elements is supported by different interests with different goals, so it was predictable that the administration would be characterised by policy clashes and cognitive dissonance. Still, Trump himself has some clear goals. One of them, obviously, is enriching himself and his family, as evidenced by his embrace of crypto. (According to a recent report by a watchdog group that tracks Trump’s activities, the family’s net worth has risen by $2.9bn during the past six months based on the market value of its various crypto investments.) On a broader horizon, he is intent on reshaping global capitalism into a system of national or regional blocs, each protected by largely closed borders and high tariff walls. Efforts on the left to construct a new economic model are still very much a work in progress. To some environmentalist activists, climate breakdown demands that we abandon a central tenet of capitalism: the notion that it can keep growing for ever. “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you,” Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish activist, said at a UN climate change summit in 2019. Thunberg has associated herself with degrowth, an international movement whose intellectual origins lie in the Limits to Growth debate of the 1970s. The modern degrowth movement encompasses some different viewpoints, but they all reject maximising GDP growth as the primary goal of economic policy. “The faster we produce and consume goods, the more we damage the environment,” Giorgos Kallis, an ecological economist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, wrote in his 2018 book Degrowth. “If humanity is not to destroy the planet’s life support systems, the global economy should slow down.” President Trump unveiling showcasing his reciprocal tariffs at the White House, 2 April. Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters Some western governments, and the World Bank, have endorsed “green growth” – the idea that the development of renewable energy sources and the spread of electronic vehicles, heat pumps and other clean technologies will allow rising GDP to “decouple” from higher emissions. Some green growth enthusiasts point to the United Kingdom, which cut its carbon emissions in half between 1990 and 2022, even as its inflation-adjusted GDP rose by about 80%. This reduction was achieved largely by eliminating coal-fired power stations and replacing them with a combination of renewable energy sources and natural gas. In April 2024, 59% of Britain’s electricity came from renewables. Sceptics of green growth point out that most rich countries haven’t matched the ***’s performance and that the developed world, taken as a whole, had failed abjectly to meet the commitments it made in the 2015 Paris agreement, which were designed to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5C above preindustrial levels. “At the achieved mitigation rates, these countries would on average take more than 220 years to reduce their emissions by 95%, emitting 27 times their remaining 1.5C fair-shares in the process,” Jason Hickel, an anthropologist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and Jefim Vogel, a PhD student at the University of Leeds, wrote in a study published in The Lancet Planetary Health in 2023. The degrowth movement isn’t just about tackling the climate crisis. It draws on an intellectual tradition of scepticism towards industrial capitalism and mass production that dates back to Carlyle, John Ruskin, the Indian economist JC Kumarappa, who advised Gandhi, and EF Schumacher, the author of the 1973 book, Small is Beautiful. In his 2017 book Prosperity Without Growth, Tim Jackson, an ecological economist at the University of Surrey, called on advanced countries to shift their economies towards local services, such as nursing and teaching, and the development of more rewarding and less resource intensive professions like handicrafts. “People can flourish without endlessly accumulating more stuff,” Jackson wrote. “Another world is possible.” Yet proposals to abandon economic growth have also been met with scepticism. As the Oxford economist Wilfred Beckerman pointed out in the 1970s, strong growth during the postwar era helped raise wages and keep distributional conflicts in check: the subsequent slowdown coincided with rising political polarisation. At the global level, the key issue is whether degrowth would impose intolerable burdens on the world’s poorest countries, which would love to follow the growth paths that China and India have trodden in recent decades. And it isn’t just the poorest countries that want to grow faster. On a global basis, according to the World Bank, the median household income in 2022 was just $7.75 a day. In a 2021 blogpost, Branko Milanović, an economist specialising in inequality, explored two options for keeping global GDP constant, which is the most literal definition of degrowth. The first involved freezing world income distribution, so that everybody kept their current incomes. In this scenario, Milanović pointed out, about half the world’s population would be forced to live permanently on seven dollars a day or less, which surely wouldn’t be acceptable. The second option involved reducing the living standards of people with incomes above the global average and raising the living standards of those below the average. According to Milanović’s calculations, this policy would affect anyone living on more than 16 dollars a day. In western countries that’s about 86% of the population. The degrowthers “cannot condemn to perpetual poverty people in developing countries who are just seeing the glimpses of a better life, nor can they reasonably argue that incomes of 9 out of 10 westerners ought to be reduced,” Milanović wrote. “The way out of the impasse is to engage in semi-magical and then outright magical thinking.” Degrowthers contest this, of course. But on much of the left the focus is on making growth greener rather than abandoning it, and on trying to address other enduring problems, including poverty, stagnant wages, monopoly power and tax avoidance by the rich. In a 2019 essay, Economics After Neoliberalism, the Harvard economist Dani Rodrik, Columbia’s Suresh Naidu and Berkeley’s Gabriel Zucman presented an extensive list of policy ideas, including establishing wage boards in low-wage industries to rein in employers’ market power; expanding early childhood education programmes as a means of raising the lifetime incomes of children from poor families; tackling tax avoidance by taxing multinational corporations where they make their sales; reforming the patent system to reduce the monopoly power of big pharma and other intellectual property holders; beefing up international financial regulation; and including labour standards in trade agreements. The assumption underlying this expansive agenda is that there is no quick fix for 21st-century capitalism: the entire system needs a makeover. Referring to the work of Karl Polanyi, the Austro-Hungarian economic historian who regarded the “free market” as a utopian pipe dream, Rodrik, Naidu and Zucman wrote: “These proposals take Polanyi’s words to heart. To work well, crucial markets (including markets for labour, land and capital) must be embedded in nonmarket institutions, and the ‘rules of the game’ must be supplied by government.” The mention of Polanyi was a reminder of what is at stake in these policy debates. In containing capitalism within a new set of rules and social norms, postwar Keynesian social democracy seemingly refuted Polanyi’s argument, which he made during the 1930s, that socialism or fascism was the logical end point of the system. Keynesianism established a middle ground. But when neoliberalism supplanted it, capitalism again broke free of its bounds, with disastrous results. John Maynard Keynes in 1940. Photograph: Tim Gidal/Getty Images The challenge now facing the centre-left is to construct a new managed capitalism for a globalised, tech-dominated and finance-driven world in which the labour movement is nowhere near as powerful as it was in the middle of the 20th century. In a paper published in 2021, the economists Samuel Bowles, of the Santa Fe Institute, and Wendy Carlin, of University College London, argued that efforts to build a new economic paradigm should be organised around “shrinking capitalism” to a “diminished space” where it could do less damage, and its strengths, such as its capacity to spur innovation, would serve the community. Political and economic forces were aligning with this new paradigm, the two economists argued. Concerns about the climate emergency and inequality were undermining support for capitalism in general terms, while the rise of AI and robotics was undermining the traditional hierarchical capitalist firm, in which workers carried out routine, preassigned tasks for a set wage or salary. More flexible forms of economic organisation were emerging, such as open-source collaborations and the gig economy, in which many workers were nominally self-employed. Bowles and Carlin weren’t endorsing the practices of platform companies, like Uber and Lyft, that rely on gig workers. They were arguing that technology-driven capitalism was, to some extent, eating itself, and that this cannibalisation was creating space for alternative economic models, including some that have long existed but could in the future have broader appeal, such as not-for-profits, worker-owned cooperatives and community-organised public commons. “This is a confluence that could propel a new paradigm in political economy to dominance,” the article concluded. Perhaps a new economic paradigm will emerge, but Trump’s re-election and the rising support for rightwing populism in other western countries, including Britain, raises the question of what sort of paradigm it will be. When the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci was languishing in Mussolini’s prisons during the 1920s and 30s, he thought deeply about the relationship between broad economic forces and economic ideologies. In the prison notebooks he kept, he remarked how in certain circumstances the forces and ideologies come together in a “historical bloc” that can exercise political power through consent rather than force, a phenomenon he referred to as “hegemony”. The managed capitalism of the postwar era was based on a bloc that combined blue-collar workers and their liberal-minded allies from the professional classes, domestically focused businesses, long-term capital and Keynesian/social democratic policy ideas. The globalised hypercapitalism of the post-cold war era was based on internationally minded businesses, educated workers whose jobs couldn’t be displaced by low-wage foreign competition, footloose capital and free market ideology. As we enter the second quarter of the 21st century, the question is what sort of bloc can exercise power in a world shrunken by digital technology but splintered by nationalism. ******** state capitalism arguably represents one candidate, but its undemocratic nature has blunted its appeal to other countries. So has the slowdown in the ******** economy since Xi Jinping took over in 2012. Trumpian economic nationalism is another contender. His return to the White House on a platform of tariffs and mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, which appeals to nativist voters and domestically oriented businesses, demonstrated that his victory in 2016 wasn’t a fluke. To be sure, the presence in Trump’s circle of Elon Musk and various Wall Street tycoons who have benefited enormously from globalisation and financialisation highlights the glaring contradictions in the Maga movement, as does Trump’s commitment to preserving the regressive tax cuts that Congress passed during his first term. But none of this has prevented him and his allies from positioning themselves as outsiders attacking a corrupt establishment. This political confidence trick is embodied in the figure of JD Vance, Trump’s vice-president, who once worked for a venture capital firm and defended globalisation but now positions himself as an ersatz philosopher of the new right. At the 2024 Republican National Convention, Vance stated blithely, “We’re done … catering to Wall Street. We’ll commit to the working man.” Silvia Federici and Judy Ramirez of Wages for Housework campaign in London, 1975. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images On the far left, replacing capitalism remains the ultimate goal. But with the exception of a few places, such as depressed parts of East Germany, there is little popular enthusiasm for reviving the ********** model of state ownership and central planning. Many leftists are more interested in creating new institutions and communities that operate independently of the monolithic capitalist economy and the state, such as protest encampments, bartering and recycling networks, communal farms, and small-scale artisanal enterprises. Even though early 19th century figures like Robert Owen, William Thompson and Charles Fourier no longer figure prominently on the left, the goal of creating communities and subeconomies that operate beyond the cash nexus goes back to their efforts to create new cooperative communities. Two centuries on, their descendants have yet to demonstrate how they would overcome the practical problems that plagued their predecessors, especially if their ideas were applied at the national or global level. But the lure of what Silvia Federici, the co-creator of the Wages for Housework movement, has described as a “new commons” is a timeless one. “For what the commons in essence stands for,” Federici wrote, “is the recognition that life in a Hobbesian world, where one competes against all and prosperity is gained at the expense of others, is not worth living and is a sure recipe for defeat.” The idea of shrinking capitalism seems like one that a broad range of people on the left and centre-left could unite around, from Federici to Bowles and Carlin to Joseph Stiglitz, the American liberal economist. In his 2024 book The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society, Stiglitz called for a “decentralised economy with a rich ecology of institutions.” Noting the many encroachments that capitalism had made in recent decades, he wrote, “There must be large parts of the economy that are not and cannot be driven by profits. These include much of the health, education and care sectors, in which the narrow pursuit of profits often leads to perverse results.” Stiglitz also called for restrictions on the activities of platform monopolies, particularly social media companies, arguing that their algorithms had “enabled the incitement of violence and the spread of hate speech and induced antisocial behaviour”. Some of Stiglitz’s criticisms chimed with those of Federici, others with elements of the Edmund Burke Foundation’s report. This was a hopeful sign for efforts to create a broad coalition to rein in hypercapitalism. But no one should underestimate the opposition that such a project would face from big businesses that, in the US especially, can spend unlimited sums of money to influence the political system, and from longstanding defenders of the free market. In July 2023, dozens of the latter – including Jeb Bush, Karl Rove, and representatives of the Mont Pelerin Society, the American Enterprise Institute and the Capitalist League – issued a statement of principles proclaiming: “The free enterprise system is the foundation of prosperity.” During the 1930s, American conservatives issued similar arguments in opposing FDR’s New Deal. In the early 1940s, Hayek issued his warning that the shift toward collectivism could lead to serfdom. More recently, many American conservatives have criticised the government response to the Covid 19 pandemic, which included large stimulus programmes. It wasn’t perfect, but it headed off a lengthy slump, and, in some of its particulars, it was highly illuminating. The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 converted an existing programme of tax credits for low-paid workers with children into a monthly universal cash benefit of $300 per child. In the year after this policy was introduced, the rate of child poverty, as measured by the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Policy Measure, fell from 9.7% to 5.2%. In 2022, when the expanded tax credits were eliminated, the child poverty rate shot back up to 12.4% – the biggest one-year increase on record. The lesson was clear: it is perfectly possible to reduce child poverty, just as it was possible in the 20th century to reduce old-age poverty by introducing state pensions. Capitalism can be reformed: the challenge is to summon the will and the means to do it. With the rise of rightwing populism, AI, and a tech/finance oligarchy that is openly exerting its political influence, the task can seem more formidable than ever. But history counsels against despair. For more than 200 years, industrial capitalism has evolved in waves and counterwaves, some of which are driven by its inner conflicts, some by technological developments and others by political mobilisation. At any moment, it’s difficult (if not impossible) to tell how long the current configuration will survive, or what will succeed it. But the capitalist system isn’t handed down from the heavens and it cannot rest. This has been true throughout its existence. It will remain true until the critics who predict capitalism’s demise are eventually proved right. Adapted from Capitalism and Its Critics: A Battle of Ideas in the Modern World by John Cassidy, which will be published by Allen Lane on 13 May. To support the Guardian, order a copy from Guardianbookshop.com Listen to our podcasts here and sign up to the long read weekly email here Source link #Outdated #unjust #reform #global #capitalism #Trump #tariffs Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Army secretary says US can’t keep pumping money into expensive weapons that can be taken out by an $800 Russian drone Army secretary says US can’t keep pumping money into expensive weapons that can be taken out by an $800 Russian drone Cheap drones have been used to destroy expensive systems like tanks in the Ukraine war. US military leaders are watching this trend closely and evaluating the threat for future conflicts. The Army secretary said it’s not worth it to buy expensive weapons if they’re vulnerable to drones. The US can’t keep building and buying expensive weapons that are vulnerable to drones that are produced at a fraction of the cost, the Army secretary said. “We keep creating and purchasing these exquisite machines that very cheap drones can take out,” Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll said during an episode of the “War on the Rocks” podcast that aired Tuesday. “If the number is even remotely right, that Russia has manufactured 1 million drones in the last 12 months, that just makes us have to rethink the cost of what we’re buying,” he continued. “We are the wealthiest nation, perhaps in the history of the world, but even we can’t sustain a couple-million-dollar piece of equipment that can be taken out with an $800 drone and munition,” he said. Driscoll was responding to a question about whether the US military was walking away from the Robotic Combat Vehicle. He said that while the concept was valuable, the cost ratio didn’t work. Cheap drones have been used to deliver precision strikes against expensive military equipment.*********/REUTERS The US military has been watching the war in Ukraine, where cheap drones packed with explosives are damaging or destroying expensive combat equipment like tanks, other armored vehicles, air defenses, and even warships, highlighting the vulnerability of larger and more prized weapons that are insufficiently defended. The proliferation of cheap drones — some of which cost as little as a few hundred dollars — has become a growing concern for the US military as it readies for the possibility of a large-scale confrontation between NATO and Russia in Europe or a fight with China in the Pacific. Moscow said it produced 1.5 million drones last year. A Ukrainian tank commander called Russian drones a major threat to his American-made M1 Abrams tank, which costs about $10 million. Ukraine has outfitted its Abrams tanks and other systems, including European-made tanks and American-made armored fighting vehicles, with additional armor to help protect the expensive equipment from drones, but it’s not a perfect solution. Armored vehicle losses in this war have been high. Ukraine, for example, has lost more than 4,400 armored vehicles, while Russia has lost more than 12,600, according to Oryx, an open-source intelligence site that tracks military equipment losses on both sides. And drones aren’t just a threat to land assets. Ukrainian naval drones packed with explosives have wreaked havoc on Russia’s ****** Sea Fleet. These drones have even been upgraded to launch missiles. Ukraine said one managed to take down two of Russia’s $50 million Su-30 fighter jets over the weekend. Read the original article on Business Insider Source link #Army #secretary #pumping #money #expensive #weapons #Russian #drone Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Trump’s Threat of ‘Foreign’ Film Tariffs Stirs Anxiety in the U.K. Trump’s Threat of ‘Foreign’ Film Tariffs Stirs Anxiety in the U.K. President Trump’s desire to “make Hollywood great again” by wielding his preferred economic weapon — tariffs — has sent a shiver through Britain’s film industry. British producers, camera workers, costume designers and other film crew woke up Monday to Mr. Trump’s message that he wanted to impose 100 percent tariffs on films made in “foreign lands.” This threat is particularly alarming in Britain, where Hollywood blockbusters are a critical part of the industry. “It came completely out of the blue,” said Philippa Childs, the head of Bectu, the British union for workers in the creative arts. “It’s pretty frightening.” Last year, nearly 90 percent of the 5.6 billion pounds, or $7.8 billion, spent on film and high-end TV production in Britain came from abroad, mostly the United States, such as the upcoming “Jurassic World Rebirth” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.” Britain’s biggest and most esteemed studios are home to streaming giants like Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime. For decades, productions have been drawn to Britain by its generous tax breaks but also its experienced work force, which has been making Hollywood hits since “Star Wars” in the 1970s. Mr. Trump has, so far, not followed through on this threat, and it’s not clear how he would carry it out. But the British industry is still recovering from disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic and then the 2023 actors’ and screenwriters’ strikes in the United States, and the concern is that uncertainty about tariffs could wipe out that progress. “Studios around London are really filling up, and people are getting back to work,” Ms. Childs said. “Our fear would be that those studios suddenly become empty again if this were to become a reality.” Bectu members are still living with the memories of the strikes, Ms. Childs said. Eighty percent of members Bectu surveyed at the time said their jobs had been affected, with three-quarters not working. Marcus Ryder, chief executive of the Film and TV Charity, which supports industry workers with their mental health and finances, is preparing for an influx of requests for help. “The uncertainty is really disempowering,” he said. People “have no idea what the tariffs mean, nor how to react to them.” It is “very destabilizing,” he added. Mr. Ryder said there was a fear among companies and workers that their industry would be decimated if people, concerned that they wouldn’t be able to pay their bills, left their jobs. Support that was given during the pandemic and the strikes, such as cash grants, could not be provided over the long term if tariffs were enforced. “Even a short-term tariff could have a long-term devastating effect on the work force,” he said. “The uncertainty is really disempowering,” said Marcus Ryder, chief executive of the Film and TV Charity.Credit…Pool photo by WPA Mr. Trump’s suggestions of tariffs are “concerning,” said Adrian Wootton, the chief executive of the British Film Commission, which helps attract productions to Britain. He said his organization would meet with the government and other industry figures to discuss its concerns. The British government is in “active discussions with the top of the U.S. administration” about these potential tariffs and working to establish what might be proposed, Chris Bryant, a minister in the department overseeing culture, told lawmakers in Parliament on Wednesday. “This is a very fluid situation, and we will continue to take a calm and steady approach.” Mr. Bryant added that a lot of concerned companies had reached out. One of the first was Pinewood Group, which owns the large studio famous for filming the Bond movies. At the same time, Britain and the United States are reportedly close to agreeing to a pact that would ease some of the impact of recent increases in U.S. tariffs. Many trade experts question how tariffs on films could be enforced. Major film productions are increasingly international, with cast and crew from different countries and with different aspects of filmmaking, like filming, postproduction, visual effects and distribution, taking place in different locations. Determining what exactly is a “foreign” film and how to impose tariffs on services would be complex. “I don’t think it can be done,” said David Henig, a trade expert in London. Instead, it’s more likely that American tax breaks would be increased, he said. “Obviously that does make it a threat to the U.K. and lots of other countries that have been handing out tax credits to make films,” he added. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California countered Mr. Trump’s tariffs suggestion on Monday with his own proposal: a $7.5 billion federal film tax credit. It would be the largest single government subsidy program ever for the industry in the United States, and the first of its kind at the federal level. Even without tariffs, higher tax incentives in the United States would “inevitably” have an impact on the British industry, Ms. Childs of Bectu said. To some extent, the increasing dependence on American productions is a challenge for the British industry and its workers. Movies likes “Wicked” and “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning” and TV shows like the “Game of Thrones” spinoff “House of the Dragon” were filmed predominantly in the southeast of England. The British government has increased tax breaks for smaller productions in an effort to bolster Britain’s independent film industry. Those tax credits will help, Ms. Childs said, “but I don’t think it’s going to fill the void of U.S. investment.” Source link #Trumps #Threat #Foreign #Film #Tariffs #Stirs #Anxiety #U.K Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

The Huge, Under-the-Radar Shift Happening in the West Bank The Huge, Under-the-Radar Shift Happening in the West Bank The streets looked like Gaza. Homes reduced to rubble, walls pockmarked by bullet holes, roads ripped apart by bulldozers. Neighborhood after neighborhood was deserted. But this was not Gaza, a territory devastated by the war between Israel and the militant group ******, where tens of thousands have been killed and hunger stalks the population. It was the occupied West Bank, another ************ territory where the Israeli military has been tightening control in the most sweeping crackdown on militancy there in a generation. The contours of the new offensive were unfolding during a recent visit by New York Times reporters to the city of Jenin, among the once densely populated neighborhoods that have been cleared out since an operation began in January. In one of those areas, more than 10,000 people lived until recently. Now, it is empty — its roads blocked by mounds of dirt and flanked by piles of rubble. This week, the Israeli military said it would be demolishing homes in Tulkarm, a city near Jenin, to make crowded neighborhoods and streets more accessible to Israeli forces and to prevent the re-emergence of militants. “They’re taking away my future,” Muath Amarne, a 23-year-old university student, said on Wednesday, the day he learned that his home in Tulkarm would be destroyed. Israel conducted frequent military operations in this area in recent years, but its forces almost always left within hours or days. Since January, however, its military has maintained its longest-running presence in the heart of West Bank cities in decades. The campaign has targeted ****** and another ************ militant group, Islamic ******. In recent weeks, however, clashes have become rare, in a sign that Israel and the ************ authorities in the West Bank have arrested or killed many of the militants. The two cities most affected, Jenin and Tulkarm, have long been controlled by the ************ Authority, the semiautonomous body that cooperates with Israel on security and which many Palestinians hoped would evolve into the government of a future state. But Israel’s extended presence in these West Bank cities is undermining the powers of the ************ Authority. Israel has argued that the Authority was not doing enough to tamp down militancy in the territory. “We’re at a turning point in the conflict,” Mohammed Jarrar, the mayor of Jenin, said in an interview at his office in March. “Israel is acting as if the ************ Authority doesn’t exist.” The Israeli assault began days after a cease-fire in Gaza took hold in January. Around that time, the government added a new objective to its war goals: delivering a blow to West Bank militants. Days later, armored vehicles backed by helicopters streamed into the Jenin camp. Israel said it has killed more than 100 militants and arrested hundreds since the operation began. It has displaced roughly 40,000 Palestinians — more than any other military campaign in the West Bank since Israel captured the territory in the 1967 Middle East war. That has summoned fears among some Palestinians of a second nakba — the Arabic word for disaster that is used to describe the mass flight and expulsion of Palestinians during the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to go home like in 1948,” said Saleema al-Saadi, 83, a resident of the Jenin camp who said she had been displaced once before nearly eight decades ago. In late February, Defense Minister Israel Katz told Israeli forces to prepare to remain in Jenin and Tulkarm for the next year. If that happens, it would be a major change in the way West Bank cities have been governed since the creation of the ************ Authority in the 1990s. Around that time, Israel ceded most governing responsibilities over the cities to the ************ Authority. The Times reporters visited the camp in Jenin escorted by a senior Israeli military officer in an armored personnel carrier to gain rare access to restricted areas. The Times did not allow the Israeli military to screen its coverage before publication, but it agreed not to photograph the faces of some Israeli troops. Armed ************ groups had built weapons factories in the camps, barricaded themselves in the most crowded districts and planted improvised explosive devices under roads to ambush Israeli soldiers. The Israeli forces patrol the camps in Jenin and Tulkarm day and night. They have been combing building by building in search of weapons and have been blowing up homes that they believe were used for military purposes. They have also been expanding roads, according to aerial photos, something that would make it easier for soldiers to reach densely populated parts of the camps. The military has demolished buildings and roads that it says are riddled with terrorist hide-outs and booby traps. “They’re signaling that they want to annex,” said Ammar Abu Bakr, chairman of the Jenin chamber of commerce, echoing a fear of many other Palestinians. The ************ fears have been fed by the fact that powerful ministers in Israel’s hard-line government advocate annexation of the West Bank, home to nearly three million Palestinians and 500,000 Israeli settlers. The camps — crowded neighborhoods that Palestinians say embody the plight of ************ refugees — have housed tens of thousands of people for decades. What were once clusters of tents have evolved into concrete structures in poor neighborhoods. Mr. Abu Bakr, the chairman of the Jenin chamber of commerce, and Mr. Jarrar, the mayor, said they had been told in late January by Lt. Col. Amir Abu Janab, the Israeli military liaison for Jenin, that Israel was planning to transform the Jenin camp into a normal neighborhood, which many Palestinians oppose because they see it as an attempt to erase a symbol of the plight of refugees. They said they had also been told that UNRWA, the U.N. agency that aids Palestinians and runs schools and clinics in the West Bank, would no longer have a role in the Jenin camp. Israel has long had tense relations with the agency and hostility toward UNRWA has grown since the Gaza war began on Oct. 7, 2023 with a ****** attack on Israel. COGAT, the Israeli military agency that liaises with Palestinians, declined to comment. The Israeli military has denied that they forced people to leave. But Palestinians said they had been threatened with violence if they refused. Kifah Sahweil, 52, said an Israeli drone flew close to her home in Jenin a few months ago, telling her through a speaker to raise her hands and leave. She said the drone warned her home would be targeted if she didn’t comply. After Ms. Sahweil rushed outside with her son, the drone followed and instructed them where to go until they left the camp, she said. “I felt that they were going to kill us,” said Ms. Sahweil. The senior military officer who led the visit to Jenin said Israeli forces were demolishing militant infrastructure like tunnels, weapons caches, and manufacturing sites, rejecting suggestions that Israel was pursuing goals beyond restoring security. He spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with military protocol. He pointed to a damaged former train station that had been built in 1908 when the area was part of the Ottoman Empire. He said militants had built a secret tunnel beneath it which the military blew up. About six miles from the Jenin camp, hundreds of displaced Palestinians were scattered in apartment buildings meant for university students. Mohammed Abu Wasfeh, 45 and a resident of Jenin camp, was helping new arrivals settle into one-room apartments while children played outside. For him, the most painful part of displacement wasn’t being forced from his home, but not knowing what had happened to it. “We’re living in the unknown,” he said. “We’re experiencing a tortuous and destabilizing journey.” He added: “We’ve lost control of everything.” Lauren Leatherby contributed reporting. Source link #Huge #UndertheRadar #Shift #Happening #West #Bank Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Nuggets vs Thunder Prediction, Odds, Pick: NBA Playoffs Game 2 Preview – Action Network Nuggets vs Thunder Prediction, Odds, Pick: NBA Playoffs Game 2 Preview – Action Network Nuggets vs Thunder Prediction, Odds, Pick: NBA Playoffs Game 2 Preview Action NetworkThunder set NBA playoff record with 87 points in 1st half vs. Nuggets in Game 2 NBAThunder break NBA playoffs record with 87 points in first half vs. Nuggets USA TodayNuggets 121-119 Thunder (May 5, 2025) Game Recap ESPNRenck: Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic makes loud, clear statement on who real MVP is in Oklahoma City The Denver Post Source link #Nuggets #Thunder #Prediction #Odds #Pick #NBA #Playoffs #Game #Preview #Action #Network Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Two men found guilty of murdering Perth schoolboy Cassius Turvey Two men found guilty of murdering Perth schoolboy Cassius Turvey WARNING: This story features the name and image of a deceased Indigenous person. Two men have been found guilty of murdering 15-year-old Perth schoolboy Cassius Turvey after a three-month trial. A 12-person jury found Jack Brearley, 24, and Brodie Palmer, 29, killed the 15-year old schoolboy, who was fatally struck with a metal pole on 13 October 2022. Cassius died from his injuries in hospital 10 days later. Mitchel Forth, 27, and Aleesha Gilmore, 23, were also charged with ******* over the boy’s death. Forth was found not guilty of Cassius’ ******* but guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter. Ms Gilmore was found not guilty of both ******* and manslaughter. The group denied all allegations related to a series of events in the lead-up to Cassius’ death on October 23, 2022 – 10 days after he was struck. The prosecutor had argued in court it was Brearley who delivered the fatal blows, but his co-accused all shared a common purpose when they set out that day. The state alleged Brearley chased after and caught up with Cassius, knocking him to the ground and striking the 15-year old twice with a metal pole. Cassius managed to walk to his group of friends after he had been attacked despite suffering multiple head injuries – including a laceration to his forehead and split ear – as they had gathered a short distance away at a nearby TAFE. Camera IconCassius Turvey, 15, died from his injuries in hospital on October 23, 2022. Credit: Supplied Paramedics arrived and treated Cassius, who was transferred to the Perth Children’s Hospital and sent home on October 18, but was re-admitted to the Midland Hospital after he suffered seizures hours later. He died in hospital days later. Brearley denied all allegations against him and said it was Cassius who stabbed him first, then blamed Palmer for inflicting the fatal blows to the 15-year old schoolboy. Palmer maintained he was in his vehicle when the fatal attack happened and heard Brearley call out he’d been stabbed. He claimed he saw Cassius covered in blood when he approached them. More to come Source link #men #guilty #murdering #Perth #schoolboy #Cassius #Turvey Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Trump’s Threat of ‘Foreign’ Film Tariffs Stirs Anxiety in the U.K. Trump’s Threat of ‘Foreign’ Film Tariffs Stirs Anxiety in the U.K. President Trump’s desire to “make Hollywood great again” by wielding his preferred economic weapon — tariffs — has sent a shiver through Britain’s film industry. British producers, camera workers, costume designers and other film crew woke up Monday to Mr. Trump’s message that he wanted to impose 100 percent tariffs on films made in “foreign lands.” This threat is particularly alarming in Britain, where Hollywood blockbusters are a critical part of the industry. “It came completely out of the blue,” said Philippa Childs, the head of Bectu, the British union for workers in the creative arts. “It’s pretty frightening.” Last year, nearly 90 percent of the 5.6 billion pounds, or $7.8 billion, spent on film and high-end TV production in Britain came from abroad, mostly the United States, such as the upcoming “Jurassic World Rebirth” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.” Britain’s biggest and most esteemed studios are home to streaming giants like Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime. For decades, productions have been drawn to Britain by its generous tax breaks but also its experienced work force, which has been making Hollywood hits since “Star Wars” in the 1970s. Mr. Trump has, so far, not followed through on this threat, and it’s not clear how he would carry it out. But the British industry is still recovering from disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic and then the 2023 actors’ and screenwriters’ strikes in the United States, and the concern is that uncertainty about tariffs could wipe out that progress. “Studios around London are really filling up, and people are getting back to work,” Ms. Childs said. “Our fear would be that those studios suddenly become empty again if this were to become a reality.” Bectu members are still living with the memories of the strikes, Ms. Childs said. Eighty percent of members Bectu surveyed at the time said their jobs had been affected, with three-quarters not working. Marcus Ryder, chief executive of the Film and TV Charity, which supports industry workers with their mental health and finances, is preparing for an influx of requests for help. “The uncertainty is really disempowering,” he said. People “have no idea what the tariffs mean, nor how to react to them.” It is “very destabilizing,” he added. Mr. Ryder said there was a fear among companies and workers that their industry would be decimated if people, concerned that they wouldn’t be able to pay their bills, left their jobs. Support that was given during the pandemic and the strikes, such as cash grants, could not be provided over the long term if tariffs were enforced. “Even a short-term tariff could have a long-term devastating effect on the work force,” he said. “The uncertainty is really disempowering,” said Marcus Ryder, chief executive of the Film and TV Charity.Credit…Pool photo by WPA Mr. Trump’s suggestions of tariffs are “concerning,” said Adrian Wootton, the chief executive of the British Film Commission, which helps attract productions to Britain. He said his organization would meet with the government and other industry figures to discuss its concerns. The British government is in “active discussions with the top of the U.S. administration” about these potential tariffs and working to establish what might be proposed, Chris Bryant, a minister in the department overseeing culture, told lawmakers in Parliament on Wednesday. “This is a very fluid situation, and we will continue to take a calm and steady approach.” Mr. Bryant added that a lot of concerned companies had reached out. One of the first was Pinewood Group, which owns the large studio famous for filming the Bond movies. At the same time, Britain and the United States are reportedly close to agreeing to a pact that would ease some of the impact of recent increases in U.S. tariffs. Many trade experts question how tariffs on films could be enforced. Major film productions are increasingly international, with cast and crew from different countries and with different aspects of filmmaking, like filming, postproduction, visual effects and distribution, taking place in different locations. Determining what exactly is a “foreign” film and how to impose tariffs on services would be complex. “I don’t think it can be done,” said David Henig, a trade expert in London. Instead, it’s more likely that American tax breaks would be increased, he said. “Obviously that does make it a threat to the U.K. and lots of other countries that have been handing out tax credits to make films,” he added. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California countered Mr. Trump’s tariffs suggestion on Monday with his own proposal: a $7.5 billion federal film tax credit. It would be the largest single government subsidy program ever for the industry in the United States, and the first of its kind at the federal level. Even without tariffs, higher tax incentives in the United States would “inevitably” have an impact on the British industry, Ms. Childs of Bectu said. To some extent, the increasing dependence on American productions is a challenge for the British industry and its workers. Movies likes “Wicked” and “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning” and TV shows like the “Game of Thrones” spinoff “House of the Dragon” were filmed predominantly in the southeast of England. The British government has increased tax breaks for smaller productions in an effort to bolster Britain’s independent film industry. Those tax credits will help, Ms. Childs said, “but I don’t think it’s going to fill the void of U.S. investment.” Source link #Trumps #Threat #Foreign #Film #Tariffs #Stirs #Anxiety #U.K Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Archaeologists Unearth Lost City Dating Back to 7th Century B.C. Archaeologists Unearth Lost City Dating Back to 7th Century B.C. Archaeologists working with a California university have unearthed the remains of a lost city in Macedonia, The New York Post reported. The remarkable discovery was made by archaeologists with California’s State Polytechnic University of Humboldt who were working at Gradiste, an archaeological site located near the North Macedonia city of Crnobuki. Experts from the country’s Institute and Museum helped to advise on the dig. Experts believe that the lost city could be Lyncus, the lost capital of the ancient Kingdom of Lyncestis. Related: Archaeologists Find Chilling Scene During Pompeii Excavation “Every indication is pointing toward this being the city of Lyncus, within Lyncestis,” said Nick Angeloff, an archaeologist with Cal Poly. “Nothing is pointing away from it being Lyncus.” Angeloff called the discovery “very rare” and “a unique find.” Lyncus was first settled in the 7th century B.C. after the kingdom itself was conquered by King Phillip II of Macedon in 358 B.C. It was the birthplace of Queen Eurydice I of Macedon, whose grandson was Alexander the Great. “This is the only appropriate location that we have determined may be the ancient city of Lyncus, where Alexander the Great’s grandmother was born and raised,” Angeloff said. “Eurydice I was a very powerful woman in that time in human history. There’s only one city that she could have come from, and we may have found it. Without Eurydice, we don’t have Philip II, Alexander’s father, nor do we have Alexander the Great.” Based upon the size of the fortress, Angeloff estimated that no more than 10,000 people lived in Lyncus at its peak. “It has become very clear, using technology, that the fortress [we found] was designed to hold an entire city,” he explained. “And we see the whole array of infrastructure required to hold a city inside fortress walls during an attack by Rome in particular in this case.” Related: Construction Workers Discover ‘Skeleton’ of Medieval Ship Using LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology, Angeloff and his team “were able to overlay and see what was underneath the ground. And the acropolis that it sits on, which is basically a flat hilltop, has enough rooms and infrastructure to hold an entire city inside the fortress walls.” Excavators unearthed a textile shop in addition to artifacts such as axes, game pieces, oil lamps, ceramic items, and a coin bearing Alexander the Great’s likeness. A theater ticket, which Angeloff specified is particularly rare in North Macedonia, was also recovered. “Typically, theater tickets [were] made of a metal, whether bronze or iron, but they’re always reused,” he explained. “There has never been a location in North Macedonia with a theater ticket that has been found that did not have a theater.” Angeloff and his team have been emboldened by the unprecedented discovery of the lost city of Lyncus and hope that this is just the first in a long line of finds which would map out the history across the country. “The potential for archaeology across North Macedonia to inform our understanding of the classical [eras], as well as the Roman era, is highly significant,” he said. “There’s been relatively little work and relatively little investment into this region.” Source link #Archaeologists #Unearth #Lost #City #Dating #7th #Century #B.C Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

****** smoke emerges as cardinals fail to elect new pope in first ballot – Al Jazeera ****** smoke emerges as cardinals fail to elect new pope in first ballot – Al Jazeera ****** smoke emerges as cardinals fail to elect new pope in first ballot Al JazeeraBlack smoke rises from the Sistine Chapel as cardinals cast an unsuccessful first vote NPRFood for the Cardinals at the Conclave Is ‘Not So Good’ The New York TimesCatholic Cardinals Reportedly Consulted ‘Conclave’ Film Ahead of Ongoing Vote for Next Pope The Hollywood ReporterXaverian Dean among tens of thousands at conclave, no new pope chosen WCVB Source link #****** #smoke #emerges #cardinals #fail #elect #pope #ballot #Jazeera Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Greens ‘lost their way’ with Senate manoeuvres, paid price at ballot box: PM Greens ‘lost their way’ with Senate manoeuvres, paid price at ballot box: PM Basking in the glory of a resounding victory, Anthony Albanese has shared his thoughts on why the Greens took such a hit this election. Source link #Greens #lost #Senate #manoeuvres #paid #price #ballot #box Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]