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Japan’s Chief Is Stepping Down. Right here’s Who Would possibly Exchange Him.

Japan’s Leader Is Stepping Down. Here’s Who Might Replace Him.

TOKYO — When Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced on Friday that he would not seek re-election as head of Japan’s governing party, the decision created an unexpected opening to replace him.

The winner of a party leadership contest later this month will be a shoo-in to become the next prime minister. But it’s a job that may have few takers.

Mr. Suga leaves the Liberal Democratic Party facing its biggest crisis in over a decade. Japan’s vaccine rollout started slowly. Coronavirus case counts are at their highest levels of the pandemic. The economic recovery has been tepid. And the government has failed to articulate a clear path forward.

The public is angry “about the way that Covid-19 and its economic effects have been handled,” said Michael Cucek, an assistant professor of Asian studies at Temple University’s Japan campus.

There’s little chance that the L.D.P. will lose power, but it is almost certain to see its majority diminished, he said. That means that, as the party decides who will replace Mr. Suga, the priority is finding someone who can “stanch the bleeding.”

With rank-and-file party members afraid for their prospects in the lower house elections that are likely to be held next month, many will want to “take this opportunity to change the image of the L.D.P.,” said Jiro Yamaguchi, a professor of political science at Hosei University in Tokyo.

Standing in the way of that desire, however, are the entrenched interests of the party’s elite, who will be reluctant to hand power to a new generation, he said.

The outcome of the party election is likely to hinge, as always, on the results of horse trading and back-room deals among the various internal factions led by those insiders. Here are some of the candidates they are likely to consider.

Credit…Pool photo by Philip Fong

So far, only one person has officially announced an intention to run: Fumio Kishida, a former foreign minister. During a news conference on Tuesday outlining his platform, he sought to draw a bright line with Mr. Suga, pledging a more transparent and accountable style of government that would get the coronavirus firmly under control by early next year.

Mr. Kishida, 64, is a party insider, educated at the elite Waseda University, for whom politics is a family business: He got his start working in the office of his father, who represented the city of Hiroshima.

Over his years in politics, Mr. Kishida has held a wide range of cabinet positions and important roles in the L.D.P., but he is best known as the long-serving foreign minister under Shinzo Abe, Mr. Suga’s predecessor. He also briefly served as defense minister.

Last year, when Mr. Abe stepped down, Mr. Kishida was his favored successor. But rival factions within the L.D.P. opposed the pick, and Mr. Suga emerged as a compromise candidate.

Although Mr. Kishida seems the most likely choice of the old guard, Mr. Abe and other party grandees have not yet indicated whom they will support.

Mr. Kishida is unpopular among backbench lawmakers. “If the rank-and-file members are obedient to these bosses, then Mr. Kishida will get enough votes to replace Mr. Suga,” Mr. Yamaguchi, the political science professor, said. But if those members insist that the party needs a makeover, Mr. Abe and others will have to look elsewhere.

Credit…Koji Sasahara/Associated Press

If the L.D.P. is looking for a new face, it might turn to Sanae Takaichi, a conservative who is a darling of the Japanese right wing.

A former minister of internal affairs and telecommunications, Ms. Takaichi, 60, said on Friday that she would be interested in running for the top job, taking the opportunity to draw a contrast with Mr. Suga by dressing him down for what she called his indecisive leadership.

“She’s very conservative, and she tries to present herself as the idol of the right wing or conservative camp in the L.D.P., the true believers,” Mr. Yamaguchi said, adding that many in the party would be happy to line up behind her.

That said, Ms. Takaichi has no faction of her own, so she would need to clear the hurdle of getting 20 L.D.P. lawmakers to endorse her before she could run. The party, which has governed Japan for most of the postwar era, has never had a female leader.

“The Japanese public wants to see a female prime minister, but in the inside-party struggle, she has no base,” said Lully Miura, a political scientist and head of the Yamaneko Research Institute in Tokyo.

If Ms. Takaichi enters the race, Ms. Miura said, “she’s running in this election to become the top female candidate in the future,” hoping that the profile boost would give her an edge in the next leadership race.

Credit…Charly Triballeau/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mr. Ishiba, 64, is a former defense minister popular among the public but disliked by L.D.P. lawmakers for his abrasive, populist style.

He twice ran against Mr. Abe, nearly beating him in the 2012 election, and was one of the leading contenders for Mr. Suga’s job during last year’s contest.

Mr. Ishiba has said he will take another shot at seizing the reins of the party, but it is not clear who would support him. Mr. Abe reportedly still holds a grudge against him, and the other faction leaders actively worked to foil him last year.

“He’s a borderline case in terms of a candidate. He can probably get the 20 signatures, but he’s not particularly well liked by the Diet members,” said Mr. Cucek of Temple University, referring to the Japanese Parliament.

Still, Ms. Miura argued that Mr. Ishiba may be the best positioned to challenge Mr. Kishida. Local party members, she said, are fans. “They want to win their election, and in order to win their election, they want the candidate that can win,” she said.

Credit…Kazuhiro Nogi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mr. Kono, 58, is a popular, charismatic figure with the right policy experience to be the next prime minister. But his current position as the minister in charge of the vaccine rollout could make it tough for him to win.

That’s partly because it will be hard for him to avoid responsibility for Japan’s missteps and partly because many will argue that he should be devoting his time and energy to combating the current crisis, not politicking.

But if Mr. Kono jumps in — he said on Friday that he was consulting with colleagues about the possibility — he could shake up the election. With a widely followed Twitter account and an easy, relatable style that contrasts with the traditional wooden affect of many Japanese politicians, he is seen as a leading contender to usher in a generational shift in the L.D.P.

“He’s well known for saying the right things to powerful politicians. So he is regarded as a brave challenger to old-style politics,” Mr. Yamaguchi said.

But the party might be better off having him wait to run until after the pandemic, when he would have an easier time marshaling support, Ms. Miura said.

If the party leadership lines up behind him during this election, it will be a sign that it is very worried about the L.D.P.’s political prospects, she said, adding, “He’s the last resort.”

Hisako Ueno, Makiko Inoue and Hikari Hida contributed reporting.

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World News

Shifting to Governing, Taliban Will Title Supreme Afghan Chief

Shifting to Governing, Taliban Will Name Supreme Afghan Leader

On the second full day with no US troops on Afghan soil, the Taliban moved on Wednesday to form a new Islamic government and prepared to appoint the movement’s leading religious figure, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, as the country’s highest authority, said Taliban officials.

The Taliban are faced with a daunting challenge that switched from insurrection to government after two decades of insurgents fighting international and Afghan armed forces, planting roadside bombs and planning mass bombings that killed the lives of people in densely populated urban centers.

Now, with Taliban rule fully restored 20 years after being overthrown by the US-led invasion in 2001, the group is faced with the responsibility of ruling a country of around 40 million people for over 40 years War was devastated.

There are hundreds of thousands displaced in the country and much of the population lives in crushing poverty, all amid a punishing drought and Covid-19 pandemic. Food supplies distributed by the United Nations are likely to be depleted in much of Afghanistan by the end of September, said Ramiz Alakbarov, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan.

The economy is in free fall after the US freeze $ 9.4 billion in Afghan currency reserves, part of a liquidity pipeline that long made a fragile, US-backed government dependent on foreign aid. International lenders, including the International Monetary Fund, have also cut funds, driving inflation higher and undermining the weak Afghani currency.

Electricity service, spotty and unreliable at the best of times, is failing, local residents say. Fear keeps many people at home instead of working and shopping outside. A shortage of food and other essentials has been reported in a country that imports much of its food, fuel and electricity. A third of Afghans had already dealt with what the United Nations called “crisis levels of food insecurity”.

Taliban officials did not indicate when the new governance would be announced. But the group was under heavy pressure to fill a political vacuum created by the rapid collapse of the U.S.-backed administration of former President Ashraf Ghani, who like many other officials fled the country when Taliban forces broke out on Sept. .August invaded.

Sheikh Haibatullah, a pragmatic but passionate religious scholar from Kandahar, is supposed to take on a theocratic role similar to that of the supreme Iranian leader, according to official reports. His son was trained as a suicide bomber and blew himself up in an attack in Helmand province when he was 23, the Taliban say.

Taliban officials, including Sheikh Haibatullah, met in Kandahar, according to Taliban officials. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a respected Taliban co-founder and one of its current deputies, was expected to be put in charge of day-to-day affairs as head of government, officials said.

Mr. Baradar had a similar role during the Taliban’s early years in exile, directing the movement’s operations until his arrest by Pakistan in 2010.

After three years in a Pakistani prison and several others under house arrest, Mr. Baradar was released in 2019 and then headed the Taliban delegation that negotiated the troop withdrawal agreement with the Trump administration in February 2020.

Other key government positions are expected to be held by Sirajuddin Haqqani, another deputy and influential leader of operations within the movement, and Mawlawi Muhammad Yaqoub, the son of Taliban founder Mullah Muhammad Omar, who led the group until his death in 2013.

Mr. Haqqani, 48, who helped direct the Taliban’s military operations, is also a leader of the brutal Haqqani Network, a mafia-like wing of the Taliban mainly based in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas along the Afghan border. The network was responsible for hostage-taking, attacks on US forces, complex suicide bombings and targeted assassinations.

Political developments on Wednesday gave the Taliban, whose members celebrated with gunfire and fireworks, a real boost after the last planeload of US troops and equipment left Kabul airport shortly before midnight on Monday. On Tuesday, leading Taliban leaders led journalists on a triumphant tour of the looted airport, just hours after it was occupied by US troops.

Now the Taliban are fighting for international aid and diplomatic recognition. The relationship between the United States and the former insurgents is entering a tense new phase in which each side depends on decisive decisions made by their long-standing adversary.

Updated

9/2/2021, 12:24 p.m. ET

The Taliban cooperated in the US military’s evacuation efforts, but that does not mean further cooperations will follow, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday. “I wouldn’t make logical leaps on broader topics,” he said. “It’s hard to predict where this will lead.”

General Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Taliban were “a ruthless group,” but when asked if the two sides could work together against a common enemy, the Islamic State of Khorasan, he said: “It is possible.”

A primary question is how much, if any, US economic aid will it provide and how it will ensure that aid goes to needy Afghans and not to the Taliban government.

The Taliban are also fighting stubborn opposition forces led by leaders of the National Resistance Front in Panjshir Province and other regions in northern Afghanistan, where anti-Taliban sentiment has always been strong. There were competing claims on Wednesday, with Taliban supporters saying their fighters had made progress and resistance leaders said they had repulsed a Taliban attack.

Panjshir, a stronghold of former Northern Alliance commanders, was one of the few areas in Afghanistan not under the control of the Taliban when the group ruled the country from 1996 to 2001.

The Taliban’s transition to governance is based on years of patient building of a so-called shadow government at the provincial, district and even village levels. In the Taliban-controlled areas, many Afghans learned to rely on this shadow government for basic services such as litigation rather than turning to a deeply corrupt national government that could not or would not serve remote areas.

After a military evacuation that flown more than 123,000 people out of Afghanistan in 18 days, most of them Afghans, 100 to 200 Americans will remain in the country, President Biden said Tuesday. Some stayed voluntarily. Others were unable to reach Kabul airport.

Tens of thousands of Afghans who have helped the US or its international partners also remain stranded, according to estimates by US officials. Many are permanent residents of the United States traveling in Afghanistan when the government and military collapsed at breakneck speed and the Taliban took control on August 15.

Understanding the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan

Map 1 of 6

Who are the Taliban? The Taliban emerged in 1994 amid the unrest following the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, including flogging, amputation and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Here is more about their genesis and track record as rulers.

Who are the Taliban leaders? These are the top leaders of the Taliban, men who for years have been on the run, in hiding, in prison and dodging American drones. Little is known about them or how they plan to rule, including whether they will be as tolerant as they say they are. A spokesman told the Times that the group wanted to forget their past but had some restrictions.

Taliban officials have repeatedly publicly assured that Afghans with proper passports and visas will be allowed to leave the country, regardless of their role during the 20-year US mission in Afghanistan.

About 6,000 Americans, the vast majority of them dual Afghan citizens, were evacuated after Aug. 14, Foreign Secretary Antony J. Blinken said Tuesday. In early spring, the American embassy in Kabul began warning Americans to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible, referring to the rapidly deteriorating security situation.

Mr. Blinken described “extraordinary efforts to give Americans every opportunity to leave the country.” He said diplomats made 55,000 calls and sent 33,000 emails to US citizens in Afghanistan, and in some cases took them to Kabul airport.

Mr Biden said Tuesday that the US government had alerted Americans 19 times since March to leave Afghanistan.

The president and his national security team have pledged to continue working to evict Americans and vulnerable Afghans who want to leave Afghanistan.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Tuesday that Kabul airport would be reopened to air traffic within a few days. But with the airport’s future uncertain, some Afghans are crawling around neighboring borders. Hundreds gather every day in Torkham, a major border crossing with Pakistan, in hopes that Pakistani officials will let them through.

The United Nations Refugee Agency recently warned that up to half a million Afghans could flee by the end of the year and urged countries in the region to keep their borders open to refugees.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, estimates that around 3.5 million people have been displaced by violence in Afghanistan – half a million since May alone. The majority of them are women and children.

On the Afghan side of the Pakistani border near Torkham, about 140 miles east of Kabul, some families have been huddled together with their belongings in recent days and decided to flee from the rule of the Taliban. There are also workers from neighboring Afghan provinces who, in the face of increasing money and food shortages, want to move over to earn a living.

Pakistan has announced that it will not accept any further refugees from Afghanistan. Border officials reportedly only allow Pakistani nationals and the few Afghans who have visas to cross.

While Afghan refugees living in Pakistan commuted back and forth for decades without being asked, Pakistan has made access more difficult in recent years and has erected a 2,600-kilometer border fence.

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Politics

FTX, Cryptocurrency Chief, Strikes to Curb Excessive Threat Trades

FTX, Cryptocurrency Leader, Moves to Curb High Risk Trades

A popular cryptocurrency exchange announced on Sunday that it was curbing some type of high-risk trading, partly due to the sharp fluctuations in the value of Bitcoin and the. is held responsible Casino-like atmosphere on such platforms worldwide.

Switching the exchange, FTX, would reduce the amount of bets investors can place by lowering the leverage offered from 101 to 20 times. Leverage multiplies the trader’s chance not only of profit, but also of loss.

“We will take the first step here,” said Sam Bankman-Fried, 29, the billionaire and founder of the platform, which operates from Hong Kong, on Twitter on Sunday. “Today we are removing the high leverage from FTX. The maximum permissible value will be 20x. “

The announcement came after the New York Times, in an article posted online on Friday, described the risky trades offered on FTX and other global exchanges such as Binance and BitMEX that accelerated a global crash in May. This month, those bets worth more than $ 20 billion were liquidated on cryptocurrency exchanges around the world.

Bankman-Fried said lowering leverage “is a step in the direction the industry has been headed and has been for a while,” adding, “Although we believe many of the arguments in favor of With high leverage, we don’t miss the mark either, believing it’s an important part of the crypto ecosystem, and in some cases it’s not a healthy part of it. “

Global platforms like FTX allow traders to borrow big when betting on price fluctuations – traders don’t buy and sell cryptocurrencies, but instead predict where the prices of the underlying assets will go. These bets, known as derivatives, mean that the exchange will grant them credit when they raise $ 1,000 so they can wager on the future price of the cryptocurrency worth up to $ 101,000 on FTX. Now, with the new cap, the maximum on this transaction would be $ 20,000.

This type of transaction should not be available to professional investors in the United States, but – at least historically – some of these investors have used workarounds to trade on the sites.

Leverage makes investors much more susceptible to their accounts being liquidated due to an automated margin call if the price of the cryptocurrency goes against their prediction and they do not have enough collateral on their accounts to support their bets.

It happened in May. When cryptocurrency prices began to fall due to market-moving events such as China’s announcement of regulatory action or Tesla’s decision to suspend Bitcoin payments, it prompted exchanges to automatically liquidate the accounts of the most leveraged investors before their collateral were no longer sufficient to cover their positions.

“These liquidations are obviously a big factor in the price crash,” said Clara Medalie, head of research at Kaiko, a provider of cryptocurrency market data in Paris, and recalled the sudden fall in value of the cryptocurrency in mid-May. “It is a doom-loop.”

Bankman-Fried said on Sunday that only a small percentage of traders are taking advantage of the maximum leverage available. He also argued that FTX had fewer liquidations than other exchanges and that he had long sought to “promote responsible trading”.

Still, he predicted in an interview last week that some investors would not welcome a move to reduce debt. “We’d get a consumer outcry if we got rid of it and we’d get very bad press,” he said. “But it could be the right thing.”

Mr Bankman-Fried also admitted that high leverage created the impression that exchanges like him were promoting risky trading, although he claimed it was not a fair conclusion.

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, offers up to 125x leverage. Changpeng Zhao, the Sino-Canadian founder of Binance and a developer who traces his professional roots back to Wall Street, has said that the extreme leverage numbers were just a “marketing gimmick” and that most traders don’t use them.

Timothy Massad, the former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates derivatives in the U.S., said he welcomed FTX’s decision and hoped other platforms like Binance would follow suit.

The change, he said, could be motivated in part by FTX’s success last week in raising $ 900 million in venture capital, the highest ever value for a cryptocurrency exchange. FTX’s high leverage offerings are more likely to damage its reputation as Mr Bankman-Fried seeks to expand the global reach of its platform, Mr Massad said.

“Sam has bigger visions, and this step removes a focus that might be in the way,” said Massad. “Take it off the table.”

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World News

PEPFAR Is Nonetheless With out a Chief. H.I.V. Activists Wish to Know Why.

PEPFAR Is Still Without a Leader. H.I.V. Activists Want to Know Why.

The Biden administration has not yet nominated a leader for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a $7 billion program that sets priorities for AIDS care worldwide — leaving countries that receive funding from the program without guidance during a pandemic that is particularly dire for those with H.I.V.

PEPFAR is led by a global AIDS coordinator, a cabinet-level position that was last held by Dr. Deborah Birx. Dr. Birx served from April 2014 to February 2020, when she left to join the White House coronavirus task force. Dr. Angeli Achrekar, a deputy, has acted as PEPFAR’s interim leader since President Biden took office.

Global health experts sharply criticized the delay in nominating a permanent chief. “Can we not think and act on two pandemics at a time?” asked Gregg Gonsalves, a longtime H.I.V. activist and an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health.

PEPFAR was started in 2003 by President George W. Bush and has had bipartisan support ever since. Funds distributed by PEPFAR are used to support prevention and treatment programs, including offering voluntary male circumcision, as well as testing for H.I.V. and providing antiretroviral therapy to people of all ages.

It is widely regarded as the most successful global health program. Since its inception, the U.S. government has invested more than $85 billion in more than 60 countries, saving an estimated 20 million lives.

“PEPFAR is an example of what can be done when you combine diplomacy and global health,” said Dr. Carlos del Rio, an infectious-disease expert at Emory University in Atlanta and chair of PEPFAR’s scientific advisory board. “Throughout Africa, they love and they respect the U.S. because of PEPFAR.”

Credit…U.S. Department of State

Last week, a group of more than 50 advocacy organizations sent a letter to Mr. Biden, urging him to “immediately appoint a bold, creative and qualified” leader for PEPFAR. “This is unacceptable, particularly during a time of the dueling pandemics of H.I.V. and Covid-19,” they wrote.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted access to H.I.V. prevention, diagnosis and treatment, as well as supply chains for condoms, lubricants and antiretroviral drugs, according to a recent report from UNAIDS.

And the pandemic has reversed hard-gained progress on ending H.I.V., including a 23 percent annual decrease in new infections since 2010.

The inertia on naming a leader is particularly damaging “when more leadership, ambition and governance is sorely needed to guide global efforts to make up lost ground on the H.I.V. response,” said Suraj Madoori, a director of the Treatment Action Group, an advocacy organization based in New York.

A new study released last week showed that people living with H.I.V. have a heightened risk of serious illness and death from Covid-19. The coronavirus pandemic could also benefit from the health care infrastructure set up to provide services for H.I.V., experts noted.

“There’s a lot that can happen now, using the PEPFAR structure to confront Covid in those countries,” Dr. del Rio said.

“Not leveraging the PEPFAR infrastructure — I think it’s crazy, it’s a huge missed opportunity,” he added. “This administration has been around for six months. Why have we not appointed them?”

Dr. del Rio said PEPFAR’s chief had been noticeably absent from global conversations, including a recent U.N. resolution to end AIDS by 2030, and efforts to enable PEPFAR sites to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. It’s also important for PEPFAR’s chief to speak up for the program when budget dollars are allocated, Dr. del Rio added: “I almost feel like the program is basically at a standstill.”

The absence of a U.S. voice is also having ripple effects on many issues in African countries, said Richard Lusimbo, a program manager at Pan Africa ILGA in Uganda. Core programs for key populations like L.G.B.T.Q. people have been cut in several countries since the start of the Biden administration. In Ivory Coast, for example, the budget for key population services was cut by half.

In Kenya, a dispute between its government and the U.S. Agency for International Development has led to a shortage of antiretroviral drugs. A permanent PEPFAR leader with political power would have been able to resolve that dispute, Mr. Lusimbo said.

Mr. Biden named Samantha Power to lead USAID on Jan. 13, even before he took office. And last week, the White House announced nominees for seven other positions.

For weeks, the H.I.V. community has heard that the administration is considering five widely known global health experts to lead PEPFAR: Shannon Hader, Charles Holmes, Chris Beyrer, Vanessa Kerry and Paul Farmer. But no candidate has emerged as the front-runner.

“Unfortunately, we are watching as global support for the Covid-19 response in Africa is missing, the AIDS response is being weakened, and it is not clear who the U.S. government’s leader is on this,” Mr. Lusimbo said. “Does the administration not understand that, for our communities, the AIDS response and the Covid-19 response are critically interlinked?”

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Entertainment

Chief of Individuals for the Arts Retires After Office Complaints

Leader of Americans for the Arts Retires After Workplace Complaints

Robert L. Lynch, the longtime president and chief executive of the Washington-based advocacy organization Americans for the Arts who had been on paid leave since December amid workplace complaints, has agreed to retire effective immediately, the organization’s board announced Thursday.

“Bob has dedicated his life to the arts, in particular increasing access to the arts for everyone,” the board’s statement said, “and we know he will continue to be a passionate advocate for many years to come.”

The board did not say whether Mr. Lynch had received a severance package.

Mr. Lynch, 71, had voluntarily stepped aside late last year while investigations into the organization’s equity and diversity practices and workplace management were ongoing. Those investigations have now concluded, the board’s statement said, though it did not disclose the findings.

He will be succeeded by Nolen Bivens, a retired Army brigadier general and former board member who had led the organization since December. Mr. Bivens helped found the National Initiative for Arts & Health Across the Military, which provides access to creative arts therapies at military clinical sites across the country.

Before he went on leave on Dec. 16, Mr. Lynch had led AFTA for more than three decades. He served on the Biden-Harris transition team for the arts and humanities and was a prominent advocate for resources for nonprofit organizations. His annual compensation package exceeded $900,000, according to the organization’s tax filings.

Mr. Lynch was criticized by a number of current and former AFTA employees and advisory council members late last year, who called out the organization for falling short with respect to diversity, equity and inclusion. Several complainants also said they had been sexually harassed while they worked at AFTA, and said the organization had a management culture rooted in intimidation.

Critics had called for Mr. Lynch to resign from the organization, because, they said, he had long been unresponsive to the issues they raised. As calls grew for AFTA to diversify its leadership and better serve creative communities and artists of color, Mr. Lynch publicly defended the group’s actions, and vowed to do better.

AFTA said in December that it would be the subject of two independent investigations: one related to the work environment, and one focused on AFTA’s policies and procedures surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion. Those have now concluded, though the board did not say when or if it plans to release the findings.

Caitlin Strokosch, the president and chief executive of the National Performance Network, a group of artists and organizations that campaign for racial and cultural justice, said in an email on Thursday that while Mr. Lynch’s resignation had been a positive step, the “toxic practices of supremacy culture” remain within the organization he built. She criticized AFTA for declining to share the findings of the investigations.

“Americans for the Arts had an opportunity for truth-telling,” she said, “and has instead chosen a path that seeks to sweep their practices under the rug, to reject transparency, and to bank on the status quo to keep them in power.”

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Business

Louvre Will get Its First Feminine Chief in 228 Years

Louvre Gets Its First Female Leader in 228 Years

Asked what it means to be a woman running the most visited and largest museum in the world, she replied: “Things are really changing for women in the museum world. Of the 70 curators in the Louvre, more than half of them are women. More women are heading museums, especially in Europe. And younger women are much more confident these days.”

A few months ago, it was assumed that Martinez, the Louvre’s president since 2013, was assured a third term. Under his tenure, the Louvre grew past 10 million visitors for the first time. Its Leonardo exhibition, which ended a few weeks before France went into a nationwide lockdown last year, drew rave reviews and a record million visitors.

Yet critics accused Martinez of an authoritarian style that ignored the advice of his curators and a cheapening the museum’s brand by forming partnerships with brands like Uniqlo, allowing a couple to spend a night in the museum as part of a marketing campaign for Airbnb. (The Louvre also leased its space to Beyoncé and Jay-Z to film the music video for their song “Apes**t” and features prominently in the Netflix hit “Lupin,” one of the platform’s most-watched series.)

In March, after a dispute over a new color scheme in one of the Louvre’s galleries became a weekslong talking point in France’s news media, Henri Loyrette, a former president of the museum, threw his weight behind Martinez’s critics. He gave testimony in a lawsuit brought by the Cy Twombly Foundation, which said a new paint job had disfigured a ceiling mural by the abstract American painter.

Martinez will continue at the museum, which reopened on May 19 after months of being closed, until Aug. 31. He will then become a heritage ambassador, responsible for coordinating France’s participation in international projects.

Des Cars learned of Macron’s decision on Monday, when she was visiting the Musée d’Orsay with her parents and other family members and received a call on her cellphone from the culture minister, Roselyne Bachelot. “My heart beat much faster,” she said. “The Louvre is the heart of Paris. The building itself goes back 800 years. It’s a former royal palace that became a public institution that belongs to the culture of France and also to the citizens of the world. It was quite an emotional moment.”

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World News

South Korean Chief Urges Biden to Negotiate With North Korea

South Korean Leader Urges Biden to Negotiate With North Korea

SEOUL – President Moon Jae-in of South Korea has a message for the United States: President Biden must now deal with North Korea.

In an interview with the New York Times, Mr. Moon urged the American leader to start negotiations with the government of Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, after two years of stalling diplomatic progress were even reversed . Denuclearization is a “question of survival” for his country, said the South Korean president.

He also called on the United States to work with China on North Korea and other issues of global concern, including climate change. The deteriorating relations between the superpowers could undermine any negotiations on denuclearization.

“If tensions between the United States and China intensify, North Korea can benefit and capitalize on it,” said Moon.

It was partly a plea, partly a sales pitch, from Mr. Moon, who sat down with The Times as the United States tried to rebuild ties in the region to counter China’s influence and North Korea built its nuclear arsenal. Mr. Moon, who will meet Mr. Biden in Washington next month, seemed ready to take on the role of mediator between the two sides again.

Interviewed, Mr. Moon prided himself on his skillful diplomatic maneuvering in 2018 as he led the two unpredictable leaders of North Korea and the United States for a face-to-face meeting. He was also pragmatic, tacitly admitting that his work to achieve denuclearization and peace in the Korean Peninsula has since disintegrated.

President Donald J. Trump stepped down without removing a single North Korean nuclear warhead. Mr. Kim has resumed weapon testing. .

“He beat the bush and didn’t manage to pull it off,” said Mr. Moon of Mr. Trump’s efforts on North Korea. “The most important starting point for both governments is to have the will to dialogue and to meet face to face early on.”

Now, in his final year in office, Mr. Moon is determined to start over – knowing that in Mr. Biden he is facing a very different leader.

Mr. Moon relied on Mr. Trump’s style and emphasized the personality-driven “top-down diplomacy” through one-on-one interviews with Mr. Kim. Mr Biden, he said, is going back to the traditional “bottom-up” approach, where negotiators haggle over details before getting approval from their bosses.

“I hope that Biden will go down as a historic president who has made substantial and irreversible progress towards full denuclearization and peace settlement on the Korean Peninsula,” Moon said in an interview with Sangchunjae, a traditional hanok on the grounds of the Executive Residence, Blue House.

Mr. Moon’s visit to Washington comes at a crucial time. The Biden administration completes its month-long policy review regarding North Korea, one of the most pressing geopolitical issues facing the United States.

Mr Biden has begun to reverse many of his predecessor’s foreign policy decisions. But Mr Moon warned that it would be a mistake to kill the 2018 Singapore Accord between Mr Trump and Mr Kim, which set broad goals for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. .

“I believe if we build on what President Trump has left, we will make these efforts a reality under Biden’s leadership,” he said.

Mr. Moon urged the United States and North Korea to take “incremental and gradual” steps towards denuclearization, while “at the same time” exchanging concessions and incentives. It was a well-worn script for Mr. Moon who occasionally paused during the interview to refer to his notes and underscored his speech with small but determined hand gestures.

Some past American negotiators and Mr. Moon’s conservative critics oppose such a strategy, saying North Korea would stall and undermine international sanctions, the best leverage Washington has on the impoverished country. In his annual threat assessment released last week, the director of national intelligence for the United States said that Mr. Kim “believes that over time he will gain international acceptance and respect as a nuclear power.”

However, Mr. Moon’s team argues that the step-by-step approach is the most realistic, even if it is not perfect. According to his administration, North Korea would never give up its arsenal in a single step lest the regime lose its only negotiating chip with Washington.

The key, Mr. Moon said, is that the United States and North Korea work out a “mutually trustworthy roadmap.”

American negotiators under Mr. Trump never made it to this point. Both sides could not even agree on a first step for the north and what reward Washington would get for doing so.

Mr. Moon is not only trying to save his “Korean Peninsula Peace Process”, but also arguably his greatest diplomatic legacy.

When his North Korea policy stalled, critics called him a naive pacifist who relied too much on Mr Kim’s unproven commitment to denuclearization.

“His good intentions had dire consequences,” said Kim Sung-han, a professor at Korea University. “His mediation has not worked, nor have we made any progress on denuclearization. His time is running out. “

Since negotiations stalled, Mr. Moon’s problems at home have increased. Its approval ratings have fallen to hit lows amid real estate and other scandals. This month, angry voters brought his Democratic Party devastating defeats in the mayoral elections in South Korea’s two largest cities.

This is a sharp turn from the start of his term in office when Mr. Moon turned a hair-raising geopolitical crisis into a political initiative.

“When I took office in 2017, we were very concerned about the possibility of another outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula,” he said.

Four days after his tenure, North Korea launched its medium-range ballistic missile Hwasong-12, which could attack Hawaii and Alaska. Then the north tested a hydrogen bomb and three ICBMs. In response, Mr. Trump threatened “fire and anger” when carrier groups from the American Navy steamed onto the peninsula.

Mr. Moon’s first diplomatic victory came when Mr. Kim accepted his invitation to send a delegation to the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Shortly afterwards, Mr. Moon met with Mr. Kim at the heavily armed inter-Korean border.

During that meeting, Mr. Moon said the North Korean dictator had hinted that disarmament was a real possibility. “If security can be guaranteed without nuclear weapons, why should I have difficulty holding them at the expense of sanctions?” Mr. Moon remembered Mr. Kim.

He said he pitched Mr. Trump and asked him to meet Mr. Kim. At their television summit in Singapore, Trump promised “security guarantees” for North Korea, while Mr. Kim pledged to “work towards a full denuclearization of the Korean peninsula”.

“It is clearly an achievement for President Trump to hold the first North Korea-United States summit,” he said.

But Mr. Moon also lamented that Mr. Trump never got through after declaring that “there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea”. When Mr Kim and Mr Trump met again in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2019, negotiations were going nowhere and the men left without reaching an agreement on how to move forward with the Singapore deal.

While Mr. Moon was keen to praise Mr. Trump, he also appeared frustrated with the former president’s erratic behavior and Twitter diplomacy. Mr. Trump canceled or downsized the annual joint military exercises the United States conducts with the South, demanding an “excessive amount” to keep 28,500 American troops in South Korea.

Mr Moon said he had decided to suspend negotiations on the so-called defense cost sharing agreement during Mr Trump’s final months in office. South Korea was willing to pay more given its growing economic size, but Mr Trump’s demands went against the very foundation of the two countries’ relations.

“His request lacked a reasonable and rational calculation,” said Moon.

The fact that Washington and Seoul could strike a deal within 46 days of Mr Biden’s inauguration is “clear evidence of the importance President Biden attaches to the alliance.”

Mr. Moon is confident of the progress the new American leader can make in North Korea, although a major breakthrough may be unrealistic given the deep distrust between Washington and Pyongyang.

Mr Biden said last month that he was “prepared for some form of diplomacy” with North Korea, but that “it must be made contingent on the end result of denuclearization”.

North Korea has come up with ideas for a step-by-step approach that begins with the demolition of its only known nuclear test site, followed by the dismantling of a rocket engine test facility and the nuclear complex in Yongbyon north of Pyongyang.

Mr Moon said he believes such steps, when combined with American concessions, could result in the removal of the North’s more valuable assets such as ICBMs. In this scenario, the step towards complete denuclearization becomes “irreversible”.

“This dialogue and this diplomacy can lead to denuclearization,” he said. “If both sides learn from the failure in Hanoi and put their heads together on more realistic ideas, I am confident that they can find a solution.”

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Entertainment

American Ballet Theater’s Chief to Step Down After 30 Years

American Ballet Theater’s Leader to Step Down After 30 Years

McKenzie, a former principal dancer for the company, is a direct link with the founders of the Ballet Theater, founded in 1939 by Richard Pleasant and funded in part by a dancer, Lucia Chase. She co-directed with Oliver Smith, a set designer, in 1945 and hired McKenzie in 1979, shortly before Mikhail Baryshnikov took over artistic direction in 1980.

McKenzie remained prominent in ballet theater until 1991 (critic Arlene Croce once called him “the Jeremy Eisen of ballet”) when he became an artistic collaborator for the Washington Ballet. It was a short training; In 1992 he was offered the position of artistic director by a beleaguered ballet theater that was heavily in debt and without a director. (Jane Hermann, who ran the company after Baryshnikov’s abrupt departure in 1989, had resigned five months earlier.)

“To say things were messy was an understatement,” McKenzie said of those early years. “I succeeded in the beginning because everyone needed me, and our only resource was sheer determination. I don’t think the current moment is a crisis point like it was back then. It’s not intuitive, but the company is in good health. “

McKenzie will be leaving a different company than the one he inherited. In recent years he has moved away from the historical dependence of ballet theater on international ballet stars. While stars generated obvious excitement, they were “not primarily focused on the company’s success”.

When asked if this was a good time for the company to make a change in leadership, Barnett said it was “a natural time in many ways because the pace of change has accelerated.” She added, “If Kevin has decided that he oversaw this catalytic year and that this next era will require new skills, interests and ideas, I trust his instincts to do so.”

Barnett said the company, which has $ 26.8 million in endowment assets, has managed to lower its operating budget over the past five years ($ 45 million in 2019 and under $ 30 million last year ) to balance. She added that government support, as well as individual and corporate donations, would have enabled the ballet theater to continue providing benefits and health care and a portion of their salaries to the dancers and musicians during the shutdown. For 2021, given the uncertainties surrounding returning to live performance, the company planned a number of different budgetary scenarios.

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Health

John Magufuli, Tanzania Chief Who Performed Down Covid, Dies at 61

John Magufuli, Tanzania Leader Who Played Down Covid, Dies at 61

NAIROBI, Kenya – President John Magufuli of Tanzania, a populist leader who downplayed the severity of the coronavirus pandemic and diverted his country from democratic ideals, died on Wednesday in the port city of Dar es Salaam. He was 61 years old.

Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan said in a short televised address that Mr Magufuli died of heart complications while being treated at Mzena Hospital. The announcement followed more than a week of intense speculation that Mr Magufuli was seriously ill with Covid-19 – reports that senior government officials had repeatedly denied.

Ms. Hassan did not disclose Mr. Magufuli’s underlying condition, but said he had suffered from chronic atrial fibrillation for more than a decade. She announced 14 days of national mourning and said flags would be flown nationwide on half employees.

Under the Tanzanian Constitution, Ms. Hassan will be sworn in as President to serve the remainder of the five-year term that Mr. Magufuli began when he won re-election last October. The move will make her the first female leader in Tanzania.

Mr. Magufuli, a trained chemist, was first elected on an anti-corruption platform in October 2015. He was initially praised for his efforts to strengthen the economy, curb wasteful spending, and improve Tanzania’s infrastructure.

But the Führer, popularly known as “the Bulldozer”, was soon accused of silencing dissent, suppressing freedom of expression and association, and enforcing laws that strengthened his Party of Revolution’s influence in power.

This was a sharp departure from the policies of its two immediate predecessors, who had promoted their East African nation as a peaceful, business-friendly democracy.

During his first term in office, Mr Magufuli’s government banned opposition rallies, revoked licenses from non-governmental organizations, and introduced laws that critics said suppressed independent reporting. He also said that pregnant girls are not allowed to go to school.

Right-wing groups accused his government of failing to conduct a credible investigation into the murders, kidnappings and persecution of journalists criticizing the government and opposition officials.

When Mr Magufuli was seeking a second term last fall, the authorities made it difficult for the opposition parties to campaign, froze the bank accounts of civil society groups, refused accreditation to election observers and journalists and refused to allow opposition representatives to polling stations.

Updated

March 19, 2021, 8:12 p.m. ET

At least 10 people were killed on election day when violence broke out in the semi-autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar after citizens said they saw soldiers casting marked ballots.

Mr Magufuli won this election with 84 percent of the vote on charges of widespread fraud and irregularities. Tundu Lissu, the main opposition candidate who ran against him, was accused of trying to overthrow the government and had to leave the country. He remains in exile in Belgium.

Last year, Mr Magufuli was heavily criticized at home and abroad for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. He railed against masks and social distancing, promoted unproven remedies as cures, and said God helped the country eradicate the virus.

Tanzania has not disclosed any data on the coronavirus to the World Health Organization since April, reporting only 509 cases and 21 deaths, numbers that have been widely viewed with skepticism.

When the global introduction of vaccines began, Mr Magufuli stopped the Ministry of Health from securing doses for Tanzania.

“Vaccines don’t work,” he said in a speech to a maskless crowd in late January. “If the white man could develop vaccinations, vaccines against AIDS would have been brought. Vaccines against tuberculosis would have made it a thing of the past. Vaccines against malaria would have been found. Cancer vaccines would have been found. “

Such statements have been condemned by both the World Health Organization and the Roman Catholic Church in Tanzania. Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa, urged the Tanzanian government to prepare the infrastructure for the distribution of the cans, and wrote on Twitter: “Science shows that #VaccinesWork.”

In February, the US Embassy in Tanzania warned of a “significant increase in the number of Covid-19 cases”, saying that “limited hospital capacity across Tanzania could lead to life-threatening delays in emergency medical care”.

Mr Magufuli’s death came just days after speculation that he was sick with the virus. Rumors began to swirl after the opposition person in exile, Mr Lissu, said the president had Covid-19 and was being treated at a hospital in neighboring Kenya.

Mr Lissu asked the authorities to reveal the whereabouts of the president, who had not been seen publicly for almost two weeks. Mr. Magufuli did not attend a virtual summit for leaders of the East African regional bloc on February 27.

Tanzanian officials rejected the speculation, saying that Mr. Magufuli was working as usual.

After the death of Mr Magufuli was announced on Wednesday, the leader of the opposition party, Act Wazalendo, urged Tanzanians to show “patience and understanding” as the country undergoes a critical transition period.

“This is an unprecedented moment,” said opposition party leader Zitto Kabwe in a statement, “one that will undoubtedly move us all in a very personal way.”

John Pombe Joseph Magufuli was born on October 29, 1959 in the Chato district in what is now northwestern Tanzania and was then known as Tanganyika. He earned a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Dar es Salaam and a PhD in chemistry from the same university in 2009, as stated on the website of the President’s Office.

Before he became president, he was a member of the Tanzanian parliament and held a number of cabinet positions. He developed a reputation for fighting corruption while serving in cabinet positions including Minister for Land, Fisheries and Public Works.

Mr. Magufuli is survived by his wife, Janet, an elementary school teacher; and two children.

Categories
Politics

Vernon Jordan, Civil Rights Chief and D.C. Energy Dealer, Dies at 85

Vernon Jordan, Civil Rights Leader and D.C. Power Broker, Dies at 85

After graduating from law school in 1960, he became a trainee lawyer with Donald Hollowell, who had a busy one-man civil rights practice in Atlanta. Mr. Jordan worked closely on the University of Georgia overturned case and was close to Charlayne Hunter (later the journalist and author Charlayne Hunter-Gault), one of two young black plaintiffs admitted to court after winning. On the day of her first school visit, Mr. Jordan was photographed escorting her to campus, surrounded by a hostile crowd.

After the Georgia case, he served as the field director of the NAACP in Georgia. Because of his job, he had to travel the southeast regularly to oversee civil rights cases, large and small. He said he tried to follow a friend, vaunted director of the Mississippi bureau, Medgar Evers, who was later murdered.

He quickly became director of the Southern Regional Council’s Voter Education Project and, in 1970, was appointed Executive Director of the United Negro College Fund. A year later, his friend Whitney Young, the leader of the Urban League, drowned on a trip to Lagos, Nigeria, and Mr Jordan was recruited to fill the unexpected position.

The National Urban League, the embodiment of the black establishment, brought Mr. Jordan to New York and exposed him to another world. The organization relied on a wide range of prominent citizens, both white and black, and was closely associated with American corporations. During his tenure, the group published a widely read annual report entitled “The State of Black America”.

While holding that post on a trip to Fort Wayne, Indiana in May 1980, he was in the company of a local Urban League executive Martha Coleman, a white woman, when a group of white teenagers sat in a car and passed them she mocked. Later, when Ms. Coleman fired him at his hotel, he was shot in the back by a man with a hunting rifle. Mr Jordan almost died on the operating table, had six operations and stayed in the hospital for 89 days.

Joseph Paul Franklin, an avowed racist, was charged with the crime but acquitted in court, though he would later boast that he was the shooter. He was later convicted of other crimes, including the fatal shooting of two black joggers who ran with white women, and executed in Missouri in 2013.