Month: June 2021

Categories
Entertainment

Hiatus Kaiyote’s Life-Affirming, Style-Defying Cosmic Soul

Hiatus Kaiyote’s Life-Affirming, Genre-Defying Cosmic Soul

The Australian band Hiatus Kaiyote was formed in 2013 with an amorphous sound that incorporated rock, funk and soul and caught the ears of Questlove, Erykah Badu and Q-Tip. Drake listened too: in 2017 he sampled a song from the band’s second LP for his playlist “More Life”. The group’s singer and guitarist, Naomi Saalfield, known as Nai Palm, appeared on his follow-up album, Scorpion. A few months later, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

“Ultimately, I became obsessed with the concept of impermanence,” said Saalfield, 32, on a video call made from an almost pitch black room in her home in Fitzroy, a suburb of Melbourne. “Time is an illusion that you have forever, but nobody knows how much time they have. And if you have a massive fear of life, that really is put into perspective. “

The band – which includes bassist Paul Bender, keyboardist Simon Mavin and drummer Perrin Moss – implemented this urgency in Mood Valiant, their first album in six years, which came out on Friday. With bright textures and sunlit Brazilian rhythms, it scores a hike from darkness to light and provides the soundtrack to a very personal journey.

Before Hiatus Kaiyote was lauded by some of the big names in neo-soul and hip-hop, it was a local group in Melbourne that organically developed their hybrid sound. The band formed more than a decade ago after Bender saw Saalfield play a pink guitar in a small club and presented her with a business card. She never called him, but a year later they met and started working on new music together. Moss and Mavin soon joined them, and the quartet began playing esoteric music with strange time signatures and complex rhythmic structures.

“There was no normality in the way we approached this music,” said Mavin, 38. “And it kind of opened my eyes to a whole new creative channel.”

Hiatus Kaiyote’s debut “Tawk Tomahawk” was released in 2013, and its 2015 follow-up, “Choose Your Weapon” with its barrage of psych-funk blowouts and atmospheric space-outs, landed as part of the moment that D ‘Angelo’s “Black Messiah” , Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly” and Kamasi Washington’s “The Epic”.

“It was such a multitude of things,” said Bender of the group’s second album, which is full of changes in direction. “I think that’s why the title fits. It’s like, ‘What do you want to choose today? What mood are you in? ‘”

The band had finished instrumentals for “Mood Valiant” when Saalfield learned she had breast cancer – the disease that killed her mother – and she was returning to Australia for an emergency mastectomy. When she recovered and returned to the studio, she returned with a new perspective on her personal and professional life.

“When I got sick, I ended up thinking, ‘What do you want out of life? Who are you and what do you want to leave behind? ”Said Saalfield. “It was actually a really powerful place to record from. I know what to do with my life and I will while I’m here. And it lit a fire under my bum. “

It also inspired them to embrace the spiritual that is already part of the band’s alchemy. On a trip to Rio de Janeiro to record with the well-known Brazilian composer Arthur Verocai, who contributed string and horn arrangements for the Tropicalia “Get Sun”, Saalfield stayed 10 days in the Amazon rainforest and took part in the Kambo ritual of frog venom Wiping on their skin to remove the toxins from their body. She also recorded voice memos and used the clips for interludes on the album. The opening cut “Flight of the Tiger Lily” shows two elders of the Varinawa people teaching them how to pronounce the names of birds; “Hush Rattle” rehearses local women who sing in their mother tongue.

“Our music always has a spiritual element,” says Moss, 35. “In Hiatus, the more we are in contact with our spiritual side and the more ideas we convey, the better.”

With its warped strings, dusty drums and introspective lyrics that embrace life, “Mood Valiant” has the feel of a Brazilian psych album from the 70s. It’s released by Brainfeeder, a label founded by experimental producer Flying Lotus in 2008 as a home for alternative soul, hip-hop, and electronica.

Saalfield said she hopes the LP touches people when they need it most. “Everyone experiences suffering,” she said. “Everyone experiences joy, no matter how privileged you are or whether you have nothing. The nice thing is that music is universal. If you can reach people in their darkest hour and comfort them, that’s what it’s for. And that’s what music does for me. It saved me in my darkest hour. “

Categories
Politics

Mike Gravel, Unconventional Two-Time period Alaska Senator, Dies at 91

Mike Gravel, Unconventional Two-Term Alaska Senator, Dies at 91

Mr. Gravel drew much more national notice on June 29, 1971. The New York Times and other newspapers were under court injunctions to stop publishing the Pentagon Papers, a secret, detailed government study of the war in Vietnam.

He read aloud from the papers to a subcommittee hearing that he had quickly called after Republicans thwarted his effort to read them to the entire Senate. He read for about three hours, finally breaking down in tears and saying, “Arms are being severed, metal is crashing through human bodies — because of a public policy this government and all of its branches continue to support.” (In a major ruling on press freedom, the injunction against The Times was overturned by the Supreme Court the next day.)

Mr. Gravel acknowledged many years later that his political ambition had led him to express support for the Vietnam War at the start of his political career, although he said he had personally opposed it.

In his 1968 Democratic primary challenge to Senator Ernest Gruening, one of two senators to vote against the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized President Lyndon B. Johnson to use conventional military force in Southeast Asia, Mr. Gravel said the North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh and not the United States was the aggressor. In 2007, while running for president, he told an NPR interviewer, “I said what I said back in 1968 because it was to advance my career.”

He told Salon magazine the same year that Alaskans did not share Mr. Gruening’s opposition to the war at the time, and that “when I ran, being a realistic politician, all I had to do was stand up and not deal with the subject, and people would assume that I was to the right of Ernest Gruening, when in point of fact I was to the left of him.”

Mr. Gravel won that primary, stressing his youth (he was 38 to Mr. Gruening’s 81) and campaigning in the smallest of villages, where he showed a half-hour movie about his campaign. He went on to defeat his Republican rival, Elmer E. Rasmuson, a banker and former mayor of Anchorage, in the general election.

Categories
Health

Serving to Drug Customers Survive, Not Abstain: ‘Hurt Discount’ Beneficial properties Federal Help

Helping Drug Users Survive, Not Abstain: ‘Harm Reduction’ Gains Federal Support

GREENSBORO, NC – The skinny young man quietly walked into the room while waiting for the free supplies to help keep him from dying: sterile water and a stove to dissolve illegal drugs; clean syringes; Alcohol swabs to prevent infection; and naloxone, a drug that can reverse overdoses. A sign on the wall – “We stand to love drug users for who they are” – felt like a hug.

It was the first day on which the contact point in a residential area here opened its doors since it was closed due to the coronavirus in spring 2020. “I am very happy that you have all opened again,” the man, whose first name is Jordan, said a volunteer who handed him a full paper bag while heavy metal music played over a loudspeaker in the background. He asked for extra naloxone for friends in his rural county, an hour away, where it was in short supply during the pandemic.

The death toll from overdose rose nearly 30 percent to more than 90,000 in the twelve months that ended in November, according to preliminary federal data released earlier this month – suggesting 2020 beat recent records for such deaths Has. The astounding surge during the pandemic is due to many factors including widespread job losses and displacement; decreased access to addiction treatment and medical care; and an illicit drug supply that became even more dangerous after the country was closed.

But the forced isolation for people struggling with addiction and other mental health issues is possibly one of the greatest. Now, with the nation reopening, the Biden government supports the controversial approach the center is taking here known as harm reduction. Rather than giving drug users abstinence, the main goal is to reduce their risk of dying or developing infectious diseases like HIV by providing them with sterile equipment, tools to check their drugs for fentanyl and other deadly substances, or even a safe place to nap Will be provided .

Such programs have long been under attack to facilitate drug use, but President Biden has made expanding harm reduction efforts one of his drug policy priorities – the first president to do so. The American Rescue Act earmarked $ 30 million specifically for evidence-based harm reduction services, the first time Congress has raised funds specifically for that purpose. Funding, while modest, is a victory for the programs, both symbolically and practically, as they often run on tight budgets.

“It’s a tremendous signal to recognize that not everyone who uses drugs is ready for treatment,” said Daliah Heller, director of drug-use initiatives at Vital Strategies, a global health organization. “Harm reduction programs say, ‘Okay, you do drugs. How can we help you stay safe and healthy and alive in the first place? ‘”

Although some programs like this one, run by the North Carolina Survivors Union, managed to keep holding some supplies – handing them through windows, offering roadside collection, or even mailing them – practically all of them stopped during the pandemic To invite drug users. Many customers, like Jordan, stopped coming and lost a trustworthy safety net.

Some former Greensboro Center regulars have died or disappeared. Many lost their homes or jobs. At the same time, the center was flooded with new customers and is now having problems keeping enough supplies on hand.

“The struggle that people are having right now, unrecognized and unanswered, is really difficult,” said Louise Vincent, Executive Director of the Survivors Union.

Yet many elected officials and communities continue to refuse to provide people with medication for drug use, including recently introduced test strips to screen drugs for the presence of illegally manufactured fentanyl, which appears in most overdose deaths. Some also say that syringes from harm reduction programs litter the neighborhoods or that the programs lead to an increase in crime. Researchers deny both claims.

West Virginia has just passed law making syringe service programs very difficult to operate, despite an increase in HIV cases from intravenous drug use. The North Carolina Legislature pondered a similar proposal this spring, and elected officials in Scott County, Indiana, whose syringe exchanges helped contain a major HIV outbreak six years ago, voted this month to end it. Mike Jones, a local commissioner who voted to end the program, said at the time that he feared the syringes being distributed could contribute to overdose deaths.

“I know people who are alcoholics and I don’t buy them a bottle of whiskey,” he said. “And I know people who want to kill themselves and I won’t buy them a bullet for their gun.”

Many harm reduction programs are carried out by people who have previously or are still using drugs, and their own struggles with addiction, mental illness, or other health problems have also flared up during the pandemic. In Baltimore, Boston, New York and elsewhere, beloved movement leaders themselves have died of overdoses, chronic health problems, and other causes in the past year. Her death left gaps in efforts to continue providing services.

Ms. Vincent, whose own opioid addiction stemmed from a long battle with bipolar disorder, made a brief return to illicit drug use this spring. She was keen to prevent withdrawal, she said after trying unsuccessfully to switch from methadone to another anti-craving drug, buprenorphine. She later learned that the small amount of fentanyl she was using was mixed with xylazine – an animal sedative that can cause weeping ulcers on the skin. She ended up in the hospital with her hemoglobin level so low that she needed a blood transfusion.

At the start of the pandemic, Ms. Vincent said street drug prices soared. Then drugs that were sold as heroin, methamphetamine, or cocaine were trimmed with unknown additives. Fentanyl was ubiquitous – including increasingly in counterfeit pills sold as prescription pain relievers or anti-anxiety drugs. But also substances like xylazine, which appears in illegal drugs from Philadelphia to Saskatchewan.

“It’s just poison,” said Ms. Vincent, who is being treated with methadone again. “The drug supply is like nothing we’ve seen before.”

On the afternoon of the center’s reopening, a young woman asked for a refresher on how to inject naloxone and if Ms. Vincent could explain what a meth overdose looks like. An older man asked if there was anything to eat besides clean syringes; a volunteer put a pastry in the microwave for him.

In addition to running the program here, Ms. Vincent is the executive director of the National Urban Survivors Union, a larger nonprofit, promoting harm reduction services across the country. In 2016, her 19-year-old daughter died of a heroin overdose while she was in an inpatient treatment center where naloxone was not available, she said.

Naloxone is more common now, but Ms. Vincent wants another life-saving tool to be disseminated: drug control programs that would allow people to find out exactly what substances are in illicit drugs before using them. Such programs exist legally in other countries including Canada, the Netherlands and New Zealand. Another type of harm reduction program used in other countries – where people use illicit drugs under medical supervision if they overdose – remains illegal here after a group trying to start one in Philadelphia so far lost in court.

“We cWe could have a real-time monitoring system instead of waiting for death reports from the coroner, ”Ms. Vincent said. “It would change the game, wouldn’t it?”

She found the xylazine in the drugs she recently took with a device called a Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer that a donor gave to her group this year. It can determine which substances contain samples of street drugs in minutes.

Jordan, who is 23 years old, had traveled from Stokes County, near the Virginia border, where the pre-pandemic overdose rate was nearly double the national average. His cousin, he said, was hospitalized weeks earlier after overdosing on a “really bad batch” of fentanyl that were found to contain traces of heavy metals in tests.

“At least 50 people in my area were rescued from here by Narcan,” he said, picking up several boxes of 10 vials of the injectable form of the antidote. “Even my grandmother knows how to manage it.”

Many harm reduction programs, including this one, help or sometimes even offer people to put people on drug treatment. But Jordan is one of the many drug users who are not interested in this path, at least for the moment. The next programs are in Greensboro or Winston-Salem, each a healthy drive from home. And treating food cravings like buprenorphine or methadone, which have been shown to save lives, “doesn’t really work for me,” he said.

The county that includes Greensboro, North Carolina’s third largest city, had 140 fatal overdoses last year, up from 111 the year before. The numbers don’t include the people who died from infections caused by injecting drugs, including the fiancée of a woman who walked into the center at dusk on the day of the reopening and called out to Ms. Vincent, “Where’s Louise?”

She met Ms. Vincent when they were both patients in a methadone clinic six years ago and regularly came to the center for injections and naloxone. She and her fiancé had tried to stop drug use during the pandemic, unnerved by the strange new adulterants that were showing up in the stash. But her fiancé started developing a high fever last December and was admitted to a hospital intensive care unit, seriously ill with endocarditis, a heart valve infection that can result from injecting medication. He died just before Christmas.

“Do you all have a meeting tonight?” Asked Ms. Vincent, referring to the self-help groups the center held several times a week before the pandemic.

“You’ll start again soon,” Mrs. Vincent assured her. “Being connected is much more important than any of us thought.”

Categories
Health

Doximity CEO ignored Silicon Valley knowledge, constructed $10 billion firm

Doximity CEO ignored Silicon Valley wisdom, built $10 billion company

Jeff Tangney, CEO, of Doximity at the New York Stock Exchange for their IPO, June 24, 2021.

Source: NYSE

Jeff Tangney launched his first health-tech start-up, Epocrates, in the middle of the dot-com bubble. While the company survived the crash and eventually went public, the endgame was a disappointing acquisition for less than $300 million.

By the time Tangney started his next venture, Doximity, in 2010, he’d learned a few things: Don’t raise too much money. Don’t burn too much cash. Fix a real problem for doctors.

With Doximity, Tangney created a web service that’s both a professional network — think LinkedIn for doctors — and a secure way for medical experts to communicate and share information with patients and colleagues. It now counts 1.8 million medical pros in the U.S. as users, including over 80% of physicians.

On Thursday, Doximity debuted on the New York Stock Exchange, closing the week with a market cap of almost $10 billion after raising around $500 million in its IPO. Tangney’s stake is worth $2.9 billion.

Those are big numbers especially when you consider that, prior to this week, Doximity never showed up on a “unicorn” list of billion-dollar tech companies. Its last financing round in 2014 valued the company at under $400 million. Tangney said that because Doximity is profitable it still hasn’t touched the $50 million it raised seven years ago.

“I did resist some of the Silicon Valley wisdom of, you need to go big, you need to hire 40 more salespeople and do all these things,” Tangney, 48, said in an interview on Thursday, after ringing the bell at the NYSE.

In Doximity’s target market, there’s no point in aiming for rocketship growth, Tangney said. The company generates revenue from drugmakers, who use the site to market treatments to a very targeted audience, and health systems looking to promote content to doctors across the country. It’s also a recruiting tool hospitals and health centers use to fill key jobs.

Tangney recognized early on that he could expand only as rapidly as customer budgets would allow.

“The reality of health care and our clients, who are very staid institutions, a lot of non-profits that have been around for 100 years, is that even if you lean in and hire tons of sales and marketing people, they’re not going to let you grow,” Tangney said.

He’s also not inclined to pay for branding just for the sake of building his profile — another reason why the company has remained largely unknown in Silicon Valley even though it’s headquartered in San Francisco. Doximity’s advertising budget for last fiscal year totaled $2.6 million, or roughly the amount Uber spends on an average day.

Tangney said the best advertising has come from doctors touting the product within their practitioner networks.

Meanwhile, the company generated over $200 million in revenue last fiscal year and produced over $50 million in net income.

Climbing trip at Stanford

Tangney’s journey to Doximity started in the late 1990s while he was living in New York with a trained physician named Richard Fiedotin. From their un-air-conditioned apartment, the pair came up with the idea of creating an app for the Palm Pilot, which had just hit the market, that would allow doctors to get critical information.

Tangney and Fiedotin took that idea with them to Stanford Graduate School of Business, where they met another physician named Tom Lee. The three bonded over the intersection of tech and health care while on a teambuilding climbing trip for students in the program.

In 1998, they started what became Epocrates, and over the next two years raised about $40 million from some of Silicon Valley’s top health investors. As mobile moved to BlackBerry devices and then to iPhones, Epocrates gained traction as a way for doctors to make decisions about prescriptions and patient safety while on the move.

The venture capitalists told Tangney to hire like crazy, so he did. Then came the tech crash and the crisis from the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In 2002, Epocrates was forced to cut a bunch of jobs, Tangney said.

The company held on, but it was a slog. Fiedotin left a few years later, and Lee departed to start One Medical, a chain of primary care clinics that uses technology to improve the patient experience. Tangney stuck around a bit longer, and tried to take Epocrates public. Then came the financial crisis of 2008, and the company had to withdraw its prospectus.

Tangney finally left in late 2009, a year before the eventual IPO and four years before Athenahealth bought the company for $293 million.

“There was a point during the last couple years of my tenure where it felt like we were in this tunnel, marching toward a goal,” Tangney said. “I wasn’t having as much fun. When you’re not in that place of loving what you do, you’re not doing your best work.”

Tangney had spent the past decade selling products to medical centers and talking to doctors about the challenges they faced doing their jobs. He kept those conversations going and learned that communication was a constant point of stress, whether it’s getting in touch with patients, other doctors, administrators or recruiters. In Tangney’s estimation, 80% of communication in the industry “is done via snail mail and fax.”

“Software is indeed eating the world but it kind of choked a little bit on health care,” he said.

Shari Buck had worked with Tangney at Epocrates. She’s one of the first people he approached with the idea of creating a professional network designed for doctors. Buck said she hopped on board “without reservation,” joining as one of the three co-founders, along with Nate Gross, a doctor who is also the founder of health-tech incubator Rock Health.

Doximity co-founders Jeff Tangney (left), Nate Gross and Shari Buck

Doximity

“Before we had an office, Jeff would drive up to Marin to meet me,” Buck said. “We would meet in a workspace above the garage. We used to laugh at how Apple it was,” she said, referring to the storied location where Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started their computer company.

Tangney also turned to Lee as a sounding board and advisor. At One Medical, Lee had the perfect test audience for Tangney: A growing base of doctors who were enthusiastic about technology.

At the time, Tangney was not at all focused on revenue, but was rather pursuing an approach more akin to consumer internet start-ups, trying to build a big base of engaged users with the hope that money would eventually follow.

Lee said they batted around ideas for future revenue opportunities. Helping medical recruiters find talent was a clear possibility.

“Recruiting doctors is not a well-defined profession and had been done poorly,” said Lee, who’s now founder and CEO of health company Galileo. “A doctor receives a lot of job opportunities. In classic medical marketing, you’d get these glossy photos of opportunities that were completely outdated, showing glorious pictures of suburban communities and symphony life and fishing.”

Best ideas come over cocktails

For Tangney, product development at Doximity has always been centered around what doctors need. So he created a medical advisory board a decade ago, bringing together a few dozen physicians in the network for a weekend every year.

The group gets together on a Saturday afternoon to provide feedback on new products, learn about updates that could be coming and for some general brainstorming. The talks continue informally over evening drinks and then resume Sunday morning, ending with lunch.

“Software is indeed eating the world but it kind of choked a little bit on health care.”

While Doximity had to skip this year’s gathering because of Covid-19, the event has been held in Napa and at Pebble Beach, and more recently at the company’s San Francisco office.

“It’s been probably the biggest influence on our product roadmap,” Buck said. “We talk about what we plan on building, individual features and new crazy ideas that we have. The best ideas come at cocktail hour on Saturday night.”

Buck said Tangney is known for carrying around little notebooks that he diligently fills up cover to cover over the two days.

Kevin Spain of Emergence Capital attended the Napa weekend in 2012, not long after his venture firm led Doximity’s first investment, a $10.8 million financing round.

Spain was thoroughly invested in Doximity’s success, and not just because of the money Emergence had on the line. He wasn’t yet a partner at the firm but had convinced his superiors to back a pre-revenue business. It was an atypical bet for Emergence, which focuses on early-stage cloud software companies.

Spain said that while board meetings were instructive because he could see signups going in the right direction and engagement on the site increasing, the Napa weekend was much more insightful. He got to hear directly from doctors about what they needed to improve their practice.

“They felt like they had a hand in co-creating this thing Doximity was building,” said Spain, whose firm owns a $1.35 billion stake in the company as of Friday’s close. “I’d never seen that before.”

Some of those doctors ultimately made good money from the IPO. Doximity allocated up to 3.5 million shares to doctors on the platform, representing 15% of the offering. After Doximity’s stock price jumped 115% in its first two days, the value of shares owned by doctors climbed from $91 million to over $195 million.

“Physicians are sort of outsiders in the financial markets and business world,” Tangney said. “Yet in our life and world they’re the insiders, they’re the people we care about most. We’d rather the shares go to them if there’s a pop than to some hedge fund somewhere.”

One challenge for Tangney as he continues to seek expansion opportunities is that there’s a finite universe of users and the core product already reaches the vast majority of them. The company serves more than 80% of U.S. physicians and over 90% of recent medical school graduates. There are only about 1 million doctors in the country.

Still, Tangney sees a decade of revenue growth ahead. There are digital ad dollars to capture as pharmaceutical companies move spending online. And there’s the power of medical referrals, helping doctors get patients to the right places based on where the top experts work and which hospital specializes in treating a particular disease.

Doximity also just entered telehealth, a $4.3 billion market opportunity, according to the prospectus. As a response to the pandemic, Doximity launched a video-based virtual visit service that doctors can use from their existing app and patients can use without having to download anything.

The company said it signed over 150 telehealth subscription agreements with medical systems and served over 63 million virtual visits in the fiscal year that ended in March. Yet the product only accounts for 2% of its revenue.

At the highest level, Tangney said, health care accounts for 18% of the U.S. economy, so there’s no shortage of money available if Doximity’s service continues to add valuable features.

“We’re steadfastly focused on these very busy million people who really take care of the sick all day and aren’t given great tools to collaborate with each other easily and to make care better,” he said.

WATCH: Disrupting Healthcare

Categories
World News

UNESCO Mosul Competitors Design Prompts Outcry

UNESCO Mosul Competition Design Prompts Outcry

MOSUL, Iraq – The palm trees were the last straw. In a UNESCO competition for the restoration of Mosul’s most famous landmarks, they were part of the winning design. Iraqi architects complained that neither the palm trees nor the golf-style design are at home in the historic city.

Not only was the $ 50,000 price tag at stake and the contract for a final design – which was funded by the United Arab Emirates and went to an Egyptian architectural team – but apparently also the pride of Iraq’s second largest city being made the rubble of the struggle against the Islamic State four years ago.

“It’s a fiasco, to be honest,” said Ihsan Fethi, one of Iraq’s most famous architects, of the competition for the Nouri mosque project. “The whole thing was a terrible tragedy for us.”

Mr Fethi and the Iraqi Architects’ Union had more substantial complaints about the winning entry for a new mosque complex than about transplanted trees, including items they considered anti-Islamic and a lack of parking. They say it betrays the architectural legacy of the historic city.

In a country with a proud architectural history, produced by Rifat Chadirji, the father of modern Iraqi architecture, and the design icon Zaha Hadid, this resentment is all the more palpable. In the past few decades, architecture was so important to Iraq that he commissioned buildings from Le Corbusier and plans from Frank Lloyd Wright.

The Iraqi engineering company that oversees the architects’ union issued a statement against the project. The Iraqi Architectural Heritage Preservation Society rejected the winning design of the 123-entry competition as seriously flawed. The design was said to introduce numerous “alien” concepts that would change the place beyond recognition and called on the Iraqi Prime Minister to intervene.

It is not the location of any mosque. Formally known as the Great Mosque of Al-Nouri, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the then leader of ISIS, proclaimed the caliphate in 2014 after the fighters of the Mosul group joined almost a third of Iraq and parts of Syria. Three years later, when the US-backed Iraqi forces were fighting to defeat the terrorist group, ISIS fighters blew up the mosque and an even more iconic minaret as they retreated.

Air strikes and explosives flattened large parts of the old city of Mosul, killing thousands of civilians and hundreds of Iraqi security forces. The rebuilding of the mosque complex is seen as essential to the idea that the destroyed city has gone beyond ISIS despite its losses.

The Al-Nouri Mosque, named after Nur al-Din Mahmoud Zangi, the ruler of Mosul and Aleppo, dates from the 12th century but was completely rebuilt in the 1940s.

The $ 50 million project will also restore two badly damaged churches nearby and a 12th century brick minaret.

When the architecture competition was announced, the UN cultural authority said the new design should promote reconciliation and cohesion in the city.

But in many circles it has fared from doing, causing an uproar among architects, city planners and some Mosul residents who say it ignores Iraqi heritage. Perhaps nodding to the United Arab Emirates taking that into account, the award-winning design features cream-colored bricks and straight angles found in the Gulf – a contrast to the arches, blue-veined local alabaster, and limestone of traditional Mosul buildings .

“The local architectural language is not there,” said Ahmed Tohala, lecturer in architecture at the University of Mosul, especially given the city’s history. “The materials, colors, elements, proportions, rhythm, relationship between the elements – it’s another strange language.”

“It looks a lot like the Emirates,” said Mr. Fathi.

To be fair, some of the requirements have been mandated by the Iraqi Sunni Foundation Office that oversees Sunni mosques in Iraq. On a recent day at the construction site, over the roar of a generator, Maher Ismail, the project leader of the Sunni foundation, declared it “a beautiful design”.

The expanded mosque complex will include a public park, religious high school and cultural center, while the mosque and minaret will be restored and architecturally unchanged.

Mr Ismail said criticism of the complex design came from jealous architectural firms.

“Some of the people who wanted to work on the mosque and didn’t get a chance to do so caused a lot of problems in stopping the work,” he said.

After the outcry, UNESCO held a meeting with the Iraqi architects’ union, which claimed it should have been consulted from the start. Among the main complaints, besides aesthetics, were competitive demands calling for an open courtyard next to the mosque for the public and a separate area for dignitaries on a balcony of the prayer room.

“A VIP area is anathema to Islam,” said Mr. Fathi. He said the jurors, including the chairman of the jury, his former student, lacked the necessary background in Islamic architecture to properly select a winning design.

There were also practical concerns – in a city without public transport, only 20 parking spaces were planned for use by the complex’s staff.

Mr. Ismail said that instead of installing a VIP area in the prayer hall itself, they were planning a VIP hall next to the mosque for the visiting officials.

UNESCO also notes that the competition rules were developed in coordination with the Iraqi Ministry of Culture. Winners are expected to provide a more detailed final design, with construction scheduled to begin this fall.

Paolo Fontani, UNESCO’s Iraq director, said changes could be made to the final plans, as is customary in a first draft competition. He said UNESCO would consult with local experts and architects.

The main partner of the victorious Egyptian company, Salah El Din Samir Hareedy, died shortly after the results of the competition were announced. Mr Hareedy died of complications from Covid-19, but common Iraqis joked on social media that it was the curse of Mosul residents who were upset about his draft that killed him.

At the construction site in the heart of the historical part of Mosul on the west side of the Tigris, the crews removed nearly 6,000 tons of rubble from the bombed site and recovered and cleaned 45,000 bricks that will be used to rebuild the minaret. Pieces of marble and stone from the severely damaged mosque were cataloged and sorted for restoration.

Local carpenters, working under the supervision of an Italian expert, restore damaged woodwork in the mosque.

Across the street from the proposed complex, a new coffee house, founded by local activists, flanks a series of brightly colored shops designed to help bring the devastated area back to life.

“It’s too modern,” says Mobashar Mohammad Wajid of the complex design. But Mr Wajid, who was standing in his tiny art studio across from the coffee house with his calligraphy designs, said that once the complex was completed, Mosul residents would likely be satisfied.

“When you see buildings being rebuilt,” he said, “you will be so happy.”

Categories
Politics

Biden commemorates Pleasure Month, names Pulse Nightclub a nationwide memorial

Biden commemorates Pride Month, names Pulse Nightclub a national memorial

President Joe Biden commemorated Pride Month at the White House Friday and designated the location of the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting a national memorial.

Biden signed a bill honoring the 49 people killed in a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida on Nov.

The bill passed the Senate by vote earlier this month and the House of Representatives passed its own version in May.

The president also announced the appointment of Jessica Stern, leader of New York’s human rights group OutRight Action International, as special envoy to the State Department. Stern will help guide U.S. diplomatic efforts to advance the human rights of LGBTQI + people around the world.

Biden signed the bill along with survivors of the shooting and the victim’s family members, as well as members of the Florida Congressional Delegation and the Congressional Equality Caucus.

“The site of the deadliest attack on the LBGTQ + community in American history is now a national memorial,” said Biden.

The President, along with Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, made remarks who broke barriers by becoming the first openly gay man to serve in the Cabinet. The president was introduced by 16-year-old transgender advocate Ashton Mota. In attendance were LGBTQ + advocates, elected state and local officials, and members of Congress.

“The fact that we are here shows how much change is possible in America,” said Buttigieg on the podium.

Biden is also urged that the Senate pass the Equality Act, a landmark bill on LGBTQ + rights that would create legal protection for LGBTQ + Americans. The bill was passed by the House of Representatives on February 25, but faces an tougher battle in the evenly divided Senate.

He also condemned the recent proliferation of anti-LGBTQ + laws passed in several states. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, 23 states reviewed more than 50 bills targeting transgender youth during the 2021 legislature.

“More than a dozen of them have already passed … let’s get that straight, this is nothing more than bullying disguised as legislation,” Biden said.

Biden also outlined the steps his government has taken to advocate for equality for LGBTQ + Americans. This includes, among other things, the recognition of Pride Month in a proclamation from 1.

“Representation is important, recognition is important. Another thing that matters is results, ”Biden said at the White House. “I am proud to lead the most professional LGBTQ equality administration in US history.”

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Health

Ei-ichi Negishi, Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry, Dies at 85

Ei-ichi Negishi, Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry, Dies at 85

Ei-ichi Negishi, who shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2010 for developing techniques now ubiquitous in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, died on June 6 in Indianapolis. He was 85.

His death, at a hospital, was announced by Purdue University, where Dr. Negishi was a professor for four decades. No cause was given.

Dr. Negishi’s Nobel-winning research involved chemical reactions that produce complex organic compounds — large carbon-based molecules used in drugs, plastics and many other industrial materials. Coaxing one carbon atom to bond to another can be difficult, but Dr. Negishi and other chemists figured out that metals, palladium in particular, could be used as intermediary matchmakers.

In these reactions, two carbon-based molecules first stick to the palladium. The palladium then disconnects from them, and the two carbons attach to each other, forming a new, larger molecule. With the palladium working as a catalyst, the organic chemistry reactions can run at lower temperatures with fewer steps, reducing cost and waste.

“It just allows this enormous selectivity,” said James M. Tour, a professor of chemistry at Rice University in Houston, who was a graduate student of Dr. Negishi’s. “When you build molecules, you have to be able to work on one part of the molecule without destroying the other part.”

Chemists had discovered the magic of palladium earlier, and in 1977 Dr. Negishi built on that work by using zinc compounds to ease the mingling of carbon atoms on palladium. That made the process more applicable to a wider range of reactions.

“Without organic compounds, none of us can live,” Dr. Negishi said in a news conference on the day the Nobel was announced. “One of our major dream goals is to be able to synthesize any organic compounds in high yield, high efficiency.”

He gave as an analogy the creating of elaborate Lego formations. “That is a pretty accurate description of what we have been trying to do,” he said.

Traditionally, organic chemists largely limited themselves to molecules using the 10 or so elements found in organic compounds. Dr. Negishi said that he and others had “realized that we should make use of the entire periodic table.”

By expanding to other elements like palladium, chemists in effect increased the number of Lego pieces they could use, and that opened new avenues to synthesize the molecules they wanted to make.

Dr. Negishi shared the 2010 Nobel in Chemistry with Richard F. Heck of the University of Delaware and Akira Suzuki of Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan.

Unlike many Nobelists who say they never expected to receive the highest honor in the science world, Dr. Negishi said it was “not a major surprise” to receive an early morning phone call on Oct. 6, 2010, from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which administers the Nobels.

Dr. Tour said Dr. Negishi had pursued research that he thought was Nobel-worthy. “He dreamed about it,” Dr. Tour said. “He often discussed the Nobel Prize. And what would have to be done to win this.”

To that end, Dr. Negishi could be relentless. “He was extremely exacting,” Dr. Tour said. “He had no trouble pushing people to the point of tears at a blackboard.”

Dr. Tour said Dr. Negishi also had a generous side. “If anybody would walk up to his office door and knock, his door was always open,” Dr. Tour said. “And you’d usually sit down for much longer than you bargained for, because he analyzed the whole project you’re working on, not just the question that you’re asking.”

Ei-ichi Negishi was born on July 14, 1935, in Changchun, China, then known as Hsinking, the capital of the Japanese-controlled part of the country, in the northeast. His family moved to Tokyo after World War II and then to a rural area outside Tokyo, where his father farmed and his mother took care of the family’s five children.

After graduating from the University of Tokyo in 1958 with a bachelor of engineering degree, he worked as a research chemist at the Iwakuni Research Laboratories in Japan. By his account, he realized that he needed more academic training but felt that graduate school was financially out of reach.

His fortunes changed in 1960, however, when he won a Fulbright scholarship to attend the University of Pennsylvania. After finishing his doctorate in 1963, he joined the laboratory of Herbert C. Brown at Purdue. Dr. Brown became the first Purdue faculty member to win a Nobel Prize, in 1979; Dr. Negishi was the second.

“In terms of research, he is my only mentor,” Dr. Negishi said of Dr. Brown in an interview after the Nobel announcement. “I have had other professors, but he taught me just about everything as to how to do research.”

Dr. Negishi moved to Syracuse University as an assistant professor in 1972 and returned to Purdue in 1979 as a professor. He retired in 2019, having been an author of more than 400 scientific papers.

In 2010, Dr. Negishi, who remained a Japanese citizen, received the Order of Culture from Emperor Akihito. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2014.

Survivors include two daughters, four grandchildren and one great-granddaughter. His wife of 58 years, Sumire, died in 2018.

“When he got his Nobel Prize, he became nicer,” Dr. Tour said. “He’d take his wallet out of his pocket, and protruding from his wallet was the Nobel Prize medallion.”

Dr. Tour said Dr. Negishi would pass the medal around and didn’t mind when someone once dropped it. “You could see the ding in one side of it,” Dr. Tour said. “And he just laughed about it.”

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Entertainment

Wait, Who’s Quick, Who’s Livid?

Wait, Who’s Fast, Who’s Furious?

The “Fast & Furious” films were about street racing at some point, a long time ago. They still include cars moving at breakneck speeds, but only as a component in a blockbuster machine that routinely includes high-profile espionage, military-grade shootings, multi-million dollar bank heists, and villainous plans for global annihilation. You’ve had more in common with James Bond or Mission: Impossible lately than with Gone in 60 Seconds.

As the films have grown bigger and more spectacular, their ensemble has also swelled and broadened, and with the latest issue, F9, the list of marquee names makes “Game of Thrones” look like “Waiting for Godot”. This is made difficult by the franchise’s tendency to mix characters in and out of the troupe without warning or explanation – actors are often written out and then written back in, or killed and then suddenly resuscitated. It can be very, very hard to keep track of who is who and what your business is.

Since “F9” hits theaters this weekend, here’s a handy cast explainer to keep you up to date.

At the heart of the series, Dom is a world-weary, corona-drinking street racer and car hijacker with an obsessive devotion to his family and a tense relationship with the law. He first appeared in “The Fast and the Furious” (2001, the movie that started it all) as a little Los Angeles crook with a heart of gold and has gradually become something of a freelance secret agent and globetrotter. trotting supercop. In “The Fate of the Furious” (2017) it was revealed that he had a young son.

Brian, the hero of the original series, was a police officer who went undercover as a road racer to kidnap Dom and his kidnappers. When it came time to make the arrest, Brian chose to let Dom escape, and the two have been like brothers ever since. Paul Walker died in a car accident in 2013, but instead of killing him, the films wrote Brian into peaceful retirement. He was most recently seen in the closing moments of “Furious 7” (2015), which literally ride into the sunset.

Dom’s wife and accomplice Letty was killed at the beginning of the fourth film, “Fast & Furious” (2009), after she had a conflict with a master criminal. In “Fast & Furious 6” (2013), however, it turned out that she had survived the attempted murder – albeit with severe amnesia, which temporarily led her to team up with the bad guys. At the end of the film she realized her mistake and has been back with Dom and his companions ever since.

Roman, one of Brian’s childhood friends, was featured in “2 Fast 2 Furious” (2003, the first sequel) as the silver-tongued Lothario who sits sensationally behind the wheel. Since he was called in to help with a bank robbery in “Fast Five” (2011), he’s been a mainstay of Dom’s crew and usually serves as a comic relief.

Like Roman, Tej first appeared in “2 Fast 2 Furious” and has been a regular series since “Fast Five”. He’s the crew’s gifted computer hacker, handling communications, tech, and surveillance, even though he’s ready to drive or fight if necessary. Tej and Roman have a friendly rivalry and are constantly teasing each other.

Dwayne Johnson made his debut on “Fast Five” as the beefy diplomatic security agent Luke Hobbs, the antagonist who tries to thwart Dom and his crew’s robbery schemes. After all, Dom and his friends won him over and since “Fast & Furious 6” he has been their frequent teammate and friend. Most recently he was seen in the series spin-off “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” (2019).

Dom’s sister Mia was Brian’s love interest in “The Fast and the Furious” and she continued to accompany him on his adventures. After giving birth to their first child on “Furious 7”, she and Brian retired and are back for “F9” after being sidelined in “The Fate of the Furious”.

Han, a Korean road racer living in Japan, starred in the series’ third film, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006), and was killed in a car accident during the finale. In the next three sequels, however, he showed himself to be alive and well, as they obviously took place chronologically before the third film. To add to the confusion, his accidental death was rewritten as murder in “Furious 7”, using a mixture of archive footage and new footage. And now he is alive again in “F9”, for reasons that have not yet been clarified.

As the femme fatale on “Fast & Furious,” Gisele was inducted into the crew on “Fast Five” when she began a romantic relationship with Han. She died in “Fast & Furious 6” and sacrificed herself during the action-packed climax to save Han. She hasn’t been brought back to life – yet.

Ramsey, a world-famous super hacker who was saved from being kidnapped by Dom and his crew in the middle of “Furious 7”, has since been a regular guest on the series helping the team with computer problems. Tej and Roman constantly vie to win their affection.

Sean, the hero of Tokyo Drift, is a clumsy young street racer who hopes to avoid juvenile sentences by disembarking to his father in Japan. Aside from a brief cameo on “Furious 7”, he hasn’t appeared in any “Fast” film since, but surprisingly he’s back for “F9”.

As a top-secret government official with seemingly unlimited resources, Mr. Nobody hired Dom and his crew to save the world in “Furious 7” and again in “Fate of the Furious”. Think of it as the M to Dom’s James Bond.

Shaw, another hero-turned-villain, tried to wipe out Dom’s crew in “Furious 7” before teaming up with them in “The Fate of the Furious”. Most recently he played in the series spin-off “Hobbs & Shaw” and only has a small cameo in “F9”.

Deckard’s cockney-heavy mother Magdalene appeared in “The Fate of the Furious” to help Dom. She was last seen in “Hobbs & Shaw” while in prison.

Deckard’s brother Owen, meanwhile, was the villain who terrorized the crew in “Fast & Furious 6” and chased them across London before he was thrown from a plane in the middle of takeoff. He survived this fall and came to the aid of Deckard (and Dom) in “The Fate of the Furious”.

Cipher is reputedly the most talented and terrifying hacker in the world, so much so that even the notorious Anonymous collective is afraid to mess with her. In “The Fate of the Furious” she tries to start a nuclear war by holding Dom’s young son hostage and killing the baby’s mother in the process. She returns – apparently again as a villain – in “F9”.

A newcomer to the saga. Jakob is Dom’s never-before-mentioned brother and of course the main opponent of “F9”.

Dom’s love interest when Lotty was believed dead was Elena a police officer in Rio who was tapped by Hobbs for help on “Fast Five”. She had Dom’s baby without his knowing it, and was killed by Cipher shortly after telling him the news in “The Fate of the Furious”.

Persevering comic buddies Tego and Rico have accompanied each other on several of Dom’s jobs and usually show up once or twice per film for a few prat cases.

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Health

5 issues to know earlier than the inventory market opens Thursday, June 24

5 things to know before the stock market opens Thursday, June 24

Here are the top news, trends, and analysis investors need to start their trading day:

1. Dow will jump according to economic data ahead of the infrastructure meeting

The New York Stock Exchange welcomes Sprinklr (NYSE: CXM) to celebrate its IPO on June 23, 2021.

NYSE

Dow futures surged more than 150 points after a string of economic data before the bell and renewed hopes for an infrastructure deal at a meeting at the White House later Thursday. The market’s comeback rally paused on Wednesday despite the fact that the Nasdaq managed to hit another all-time high and was expected to rise on Thursday. With a broad group of stocks jumping in pre-trading hours, the S&P 500 should open at new highs as well. The Dow was still climbing out of last week’s hole. Ahead of Thursday’s session, it was 2.6% off its most recent record high in early May.

Andreessen Horowitz announced a new cryptocurrency-focused fund worth $ 2.2 billion on Thursday. The venture capital firm from Silicon Valley, founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, launched its first crypto fund three years ago in the so-called “crypto winter”. This year, Bitcoin’s value is up about 80% from its 2017 highs. The latest fund also comes at another bearish moment for Bitcoin.

2. Three major government economic reports before the bell

3. Bipartisan senators are pushing for a $ 953 billion infrastructure plan

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) speaks to news reporters before attending an infrastructure meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 23, 2021.

Tom Brenner | Reuters

A bipartisan group of senators see Biden’s support for a $ 953 billion infrastructure plan at Thursday’s session. Government officials and democratic leaders viewed the proposal as a positive development. The President’s latest offer was a $ 1.7 trillion package. With Republicans opposed to Biden’s proposed corporate tax rate hike, the bipartisan group is looking for other ways to increase revenue. Biden rejected her idea of ​​allowing gas taxes paid at the pump to rise with inflation.

4. Eli Lilly is aiming for accelerated FDA approval for Alzheimer’s drug in 2021

An Eli Lilly and Company pharmaceutical manufacturing facility is pictured on March 5, 2021 at 50 ImClone Drive in Branchburg, New Jersey.

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Eli Lilly’s shares rose 8% in the premarket on Thursday after the US drug maker announced it would file a market application for its experimental Alzheimer’s treatment under the FDA’s accelerated approval process later this year. Lilly said, “The safety, tolerability and effectiveness of donanemab are also being investigated in an ongoing late-stage study.” Earlier this month, three members of a key FDA advisory panel resigned over the agency’s controversial decision to approve Biogen’s new Alzheimer’s drug.

5. Team members vote on a major drive to unionize Amazon workers

The Teamsters will vote on a resolution on Thursday to step up efforts to organize Amazon employees. The e-commerce giant has long been the target of large unions trying to organize warehouse and delivery workers. Amazon defeated a senior union campaign in a huge warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, in April. However, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos recently admitted that the company needs to get better from its people. The pandemic, the explosion of protests against Black Lives Matter last summer, and mounting concerns about job security have further fueled interest in the organization of Amazon warehouses.

– Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Follow the whole market like a pro on CNBC Pro. Get the latest on the pandemic with coronavirus coverage from CNBC.

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Politics

Trump, Looking for to Preserve G.O.P. Sway, Holds First Rally Since Jan. 6

Trump, Seeking to Maintain G.O.P. Sway, Holds First Rally Since Jan. 6

WELLINGTON, Ohio — Former President Donald J. Trump returned to the rally stage on Saturday evening after a nearly six-month absence, his first large public gathering since his “Save America” event on Jan. 6 that resulted in a deadly riot at the Capitol.

On Saturday, the same words — “Save America” — appeared behind Mr. Trump as he addressed a crowd of several thousand at a county fairgrounds in Wellington, Ohio, about 35 miles southwest of Cleveland.

He repeated familiar falsehoods about fraudulent 2020 votes. He attacked Republican officials for refusing to back his effort to overturn the election results — including Representative Anthony E. Gonzalez of Ohio, who voted to impeach Mr. Trump, and whose primary challenger, Max Miller, was the reason for Mr. Trump’s visit. The former president praised Mr. Miller as they appeared onstage together.

Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party, with large numbers of G.O.P. lawmakers parroting his lies about a stolen 2020 election and fearful of crossing him, and many in the party waiting to see whether he will run again for the White House in 2024.

Yet in the audience and on the stage, the scene in Ohio on Saturday was reflective of how diminished Mr. Trump has become in his post-presidency, and how reliant he is on a smaller group of allies and supporters who have adopted his alternate reality as their own. One of the event’s headliners was Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, the far-right Republican who has promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Mr. Trump’s speech — low-key, digressive and nearly 90 minutes long — fell flat at times with an otherwise adoring audience. Scores of people left early as he bounced from topic to topic — immigration, Israel, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s protective mask.

“Do you miss me?” Mr. Trump asked in one of his biggest applause lines. “They miss me,” he declared.

In interviews, many in the crowd expressed steadfast belief in Mr. Trump’s election falsehoods, and indulged his rewriting of history on the Capitol mob attack.

Tony Buscemi, 61, a small-business owner from West Bloomfield, Mich., who stood with his daughter, Natalie, in the sun-baked field where Mr. Trump spoke, said he had been at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and he claimed falsely that it had been a “mostly peaceful” gathering.

“People were praying. People were singing,” Mr. Buscemi said, adding that he might have gone inside the building himself had his daughter not persuaded him that it was a bad idea. “There was no insurrection,” he insisted. “I didn’t see anything wrong with it.”

Polling suggests that most Republicans remain skeptical of President Biden’s election victory. Thirty-six percent of Republicans said in a Monmouth University poll released on Monday that Mr. Biden had won the election fairly, while 57 percent said his victory was the result of fraud.

Still, there is evidence that Mr. Trump’s influence over Republican voters is waning — though only slightly.

In late April, 44 percent of Republicans and G.O.P.-leaning independents said in an NBC News poll that they were more supportive of Mr. Trump than of the party itself. A slightly higher share, 50 percent, said they were more apt to support the party.

It was the first time since NBC pollsters began asking the question in early 2019 that as many as half of Republicans said they were more supportive of the party than of the man.

Giovanni Russonello contributed reporting.