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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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Friday
Mar182011

The Commentariat -- March 19

** Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker: the federal government's nuclear energy policy is to pretend our plants are safe & hope we get away with it:

More than two dozen reactors in the http://www.realitychex.com/process/admin/CreateOrModifyJournalEntry?moduleId=4549814&entryId=10842517#U.S. have aboveground storage pools similar to those that have failed at Fukushima — the only difference is that the American pools contain far more waste than their Japanese counterparts.... David Lochbaum ... of the Union of Concerned Scientists, called the risks currently posed by spent-fuel pools in the U.S. 'about as high as you could possibly make them.' ...

... Bob Herbert: "The public deserves a much fuller accounting of nuclear power’s pros and cons." ...

... "Duck and Cover." Karen Garcia lived within 50 miles of New York State's Indian Point nuclear plant which has a "long history of unplanned radioactive gaseous burps and leakage problems and a transformer explosion and proximity to a fault line." Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants to shut it down, but he has no plan whatsoever for providing an alternative source of the energy the plant produces.

Glenn Greenwald: "... the intervention in Libya was presidentially decreed with virtually no public debate or discussion; it's just amazing how little public opinion or the consent of the citizenry matters when it comes to involving the country in a new war." ...

... Karen deYoung of the Washington Post: "The planned military action in Libya marks a rare international intervention in which U.S. forces will not take the lead operational role. With French, British and United Arab Emirates jets poised to begin flights over Libya, and other European and Arab forces assembling to aid enforcement of a no-fly zone, the Americans were far from the pending action, in ships offshore and surveillance aircraft high above." ...

... Helene Cooper & Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times have more background on the rapid evolution of U.S. policy on the Libyan crisis. The writers credit U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, National Security Council aide Samantha Power, & -- ultimately -- Secretary Hillary Clinton -- for moving the U.S. & other nations toward intervention." See also yesterday's Commentariat for a link to Josh Rogin's reporting on the same subject.

One example I particularly like is the encouraging number of female presidents in the region. And I must say that I’m far enough away from my own career in electoral politics that I will not take too much heat for suggesting that these women and societies can teach American voters a thing or two! -- Hillary Clinton, on Latin America

Local News

Richard Oppel, Jr., of the New York Times: "In an abrupt change of course, Arizona lawmakers rejected new anti-immigration measures on Thursday, in what was widely seen as capitulation to pressure from business executives and an admission that the state’s tough stance had resulted in a chilling of the normally robust tourism and convention industry. The State Senate voted down five bills that among other things sought to require hospitals to inform law enforcement officials when treating patients suspected of being in the country illegally and to prod the Supreme Court to rule against automatic citizenship for American-born children of illegal immigrants."

News Ledes

President Obama today on the strikes on Libya:

New York Times: "American and European forces began a broad campaign of strikes against the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi on Saturday, unleashing warplanes and missiles in the first round of the largest international military intervention in the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon said.... The Pentagon said that American forces dominated an effort to knock out Libya’s air-defense systems. In a briefing Saturday afternoon, Vice Adm. William Gortney told reporters that about 110 Tomahawk missiles, fired from American warships and submarines and one British submarine struck 20 air-defense targets around Tripoli, the capital, and the western city of Misurata." ...

... New York Times: "Libya had pledged a cease-fire hours before [President's Obama's address yesterday]. But reports on Saturday from rebel-held territory indicated that Colonel Qaddafi’s troops were attacking in the east. Government forces continued to advance on Benghazi, the rebel’s capital in the east, and the BBC reported that some tanks were in the city on Saturday morning. The government spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, denied in Tripoli that pro-Qaddafi units were attacking in Benghazi and said that only the rebels had an incentive to break the cease-fire. After the BBC report on tanks moving within Benghazi, the BBC Web site was inaccessible in Tripoli, suggesting that it may have been blocked." The Times story has been updated: "American, European and Arab leaders began the largest international military intervention in the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq on Saturday, in an effort to stop Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s war on the Libyan opposition. Leaders meeting in Paris on Saturday afternoon said direct strikes against Libyan government forces, as approved by the United Nations Security Council on Thursday, would begin within hours. And President Nicolas Sarkozy said French warplanes had already begun enforcing a no-fly zone in Libya, conducting reconnaissance missions and preparing to intercept any Libyan military aircraft."

A plane shot down over Libya. To the left of the plane, you can barely see the pilot, his parachute beginning to open. The plane is reported to be a Libyan plane shot down by rebel forces over Benghazi. AFP photo.... AP: "A warplane was shot down over Libyan rebels' eastern stronghold Saturday as the opposition accused Moammar Kadafi's government of defying a cease-fire.... Trying to outmaneuver Western military intervention, Kadafi's government declared a cease-fire on Friday as the rebel uprising faltered against his artillery, tanks and warplanes. But the opposition said shells rained down well after the announcement and accused the Libyan leader of lying."

AP: "Palestinian militants in Gaza fired more than 50 mortar shells into Israel on Saturday, the heaviest barrage in two years, Israeli officials said, raising the prospect of a new Mideast flareup. Also Saturday, Hamas police beat reporters and news photographers covering a rally in Gaza City, drawing a stiff condemnation from the reporters' association."

New York Times: "Egyptians flocked to the polls to vote in a referendum on a package of constitutional amendments that will shape the country’s political future."

New York Times: "For the first time since demonstrators began camping out in front of Sana University calling for an end to the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the country’s opposition leaders attended the protest as a group on Saturday afternoon to voice their support."

Reuters: "One of six tsunami-crippled nuclear reactors appeared to stabilize on Saturday as Japan raced to restore power to the stricken power plant to cool it and prevent a greater catastrophe. Engineers reported some rare success after fire trucks sprayed water for about three hours on reactor No.3, widely considered the most dangerous at the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex because of its use of highly toxic plutonium." ...

AP: "Japan said radiation levels in spinach and milk from farms near its tsunami-crippled nuclear complex exceeded government safety limits, as emergency teams scrambled Saturday to restore power to the plant so it could cool dangerously overheated fuel. The food was taken from farms as far as 65 miles (100 kilometers) from the stricken plants, suggesting a wide area of nuclear contamination."

New York Times: "After securing the Federal Reserve’s blessing, a series of financial giants rushed to raise their dividends and buy back stock on Friday, underscoring how Wall Street profits and an improving economy have helped the biggest banks stage a broad recovery since they were laid low by the financial crisis. Within hours of being told by regulators they had passed a second round of stress tests, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and several other major lenders laid out specific plans. Meanwhile, American Express and Goldman Sachs announced they were resuming large-scale stock repurchases, with Goldman buying back the $5 billion stake it sold to Warren E. Buffett in the fall of 2008."

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