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The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

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Tuesday
Mar082011

International Women's Day

Let's see how the United States is celebrating International Women's Day:

Fox Los Angeles. Here at home, "First Lady Michelle Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton marked the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day Wednesday by honoring 10 women from around the world with awards that recognize efforts they have made to further women's rights. During the 2011 Women of Courage Awards ceremony held at the State Department, Clinton called recipient of this year's awards 'remarkable,' while Obama lauded it as the 'one of the most important' events she will attend."...

... Also speaking at the ceremony, Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia and, get this, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Here's the reason for Blankfein's presence: he's going to spend a few bucks on the ladies. The State Department readout is here. Here's Clinton's speech:

... No mention in the official transcript of this exchange, supplied by Binoy Kampmark in Counterpunch:

The real interest came after the sugary, salutary speeches were concluded.  Questions asked of Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith McHale, Assistant Secretary of Education Ann Stock and Clinton’s own chief of staff Cheryl Mills caught them off guard.  A Latin American woman (Voice of America News remains, as ever, generic) questioned whether the United States was even ready for a female president.  Mills answered that the country was ‘more than willing to support women in a leadership role and more than willing to actually see a woman as their leader’ though she had to admit that ‘that final hurdle’ had to be crossed.

Michelle Obama spoke late this afternoon at the White House:


Not enough? It's better than what's happening elsewhere:

Nicholas Kristof: "Bangladesh has a woman prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, who has done nothing much for women – and who now is pursuing a campaign of vilification against Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who has been a champion of impoverished women all around the globe.... It’s astonishing – and so disappointing – to see a woman prime minister who does nothing for her country’s women go after a man who has devoted his life to helping the neediest women. And it’s a reminder that the struggle to achieve gender equality is not a battle between the sexes, but something far more subtle. It’s often about misogyny and paternalism, but those are values that are absorbed and transmitted almost as much by women as by men."

Julie Ioffe in Slate: "Today is the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, the brainchild of socialist feminists at the turn of the 20th century. The idea was to give women a day to come together and push for equal rights. Though it isn’t really celebrated in the United States, many countries continue to mark the date with an official public holiday. Here in Russia, it is a major holiday with its own long weekend.... March 8 has become a travesty in modern Russia. In the 20 years since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has quickly shed all vestiges of egalitarianism and become ensconced in a deeply patriarchal social order."

Washington Post: Egypt. "According to Twitter reports from Cairo, a march planned for Tahrir Square in honor of the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day was met by an even larger crowd of men deriding the women for being there and harassing them." ...

... Jenna Krajeski has a first-hand account of the strife in Tahrir Square. She concludes, "Mubarak is gone. Misogyny might be a tougher foe."

Tristan McConnell of Global Post: "In Sudan 60 women gathered on a busy street in Omdurman to protest against rape and rights abuses only to find themselves surrounded by 250 police. Ten minutes of chanting and banner waving was all the security men could bear before they quickly arrested half the women and threw them into a truck. The detained women continued to shout slogans so some of the men gave them a beating with sticks for good measure."

David Smith of the Guardian: "Marches by thousands of women in protest at Ivory Coast's president Laurent Gbagbo have ended in bloodshed after his army killed four people. The women made their stand on International Women's Day, less than a week after Gbagbo's soldiers killed seven women at a peaceful demonstration, earning worldwide condemnation. After a small women's march in the Treichville neighbourhood, one of several in Abidjan on Tuesday, security forces burst into the area and began shooting."

AOL News: the five worst countries to be born a woman. "Here are the five countries with the highest (that is, worst) scores on the 2008 Gender Inequality Index, the most recent ranking available": Yemen, Congo, Niger, Mali, Afghanistan.

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