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THISDAYLIVE
FG Approves Mother Tongue as Compulsory Language of Instruction in Primary Schools
Deji Elumoye in Abuja
The federal government has approved a new National Language Policy which makes mother tongue a compulsory medium of instruction for public primary school pupils.
Making this disclosure Wednesday was the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, while briefing reporters on the outcome of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the State House, Abuja.
While explaining that government is aware that its implementation will be difficult, the minister revealed that the mother tongue will be used exclusively for the first six years of education, while it will be combined with English Language from Junior Secondary School.
According to him, even though the policy has officially taken effect, it can only be fully implemented when government develops instructional materials and qualified teachers are available.
Adamu explained that the mother tongue to be used in each school will be the dominant language spoken by the community where it is located.
The minister said government is prepared to preserve cultures and their peculiar idiosyncrasies, stressing that so much has been lost due to the extinction of some local language.
He assured Nigerians that all Nigerian languages, which he said are over 600, are equal and will be treated as such.
Details later…
THISDAYLIVE
British High Commission Commends YIAGA Africa, Partners for Advocacy on Youth Political Participation
Ibrahim Shuaibu in Kano
The Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth and Advancement (YIAGA Africa) and its parent partners have been commended for their dedication to youth empowerment and mobilisation for political participation, transparency, and accountability.
Development Director of the British High Commission, Dr. Christopher Pycroft, made the compliment yesterday in Kano at Convergence 4.0.
Christopher explained that the role of young people in political leadership and governance generally is hugely important for Nigeria’s development and democracy.
He added that: “Nigeria is a young country with an average age of its population just over 17. But young people are too often excluded from Nigeria’s political processes, left without a voice, without influence.
“Inclusive political participation is crucial to building stable and peaceful societies, and to building an effective social contract that establishes the relationship between the state and its citizens.“
The development director further stated that the passing of the ‘Not Too Young To Run’ Constitutional Amendment Bill was a major milestone.
According tio him, “It was followed by a clear increase in the number of young candidates and elected officials at the last general election.
“From 5.1 percent of elected officials in 2015 to 6.6 percent in 2019, a modest increase, but an important trend.”
Christopher said yet at the 2019 general elections, only 46 percent of young people turned out to vote at the presidential and National Assembly elections
“YIAGA Africa’s assessment shows a decline in young candidature from 2019 to 2023.” he pointed out.
Christopher stressed that young women are being further left behind in the push to strengthen youth political participation in Nigeria, as women accounted for less than 5 percent of elected officials in the 2019 general elections.
“Nevertheless, I am encouraged by the
enthusiasm and commitment to youth and women’s participation by organisations such as YIAGA Africa and other partners,” he said.
The Development director unbundled that the UK has been a long-term strategic supporter of Nigeria’s democratic journey, adding that “we believe that peaceful, transparent and credible polls in 2023 are fundamental to consolidating the gains of Nigeria’s democratic journey.”
y the institution.
Yusuf said: “On behalf of UITH and those who would be benefiting from the equipment, I want to register our gratitude to the donors, Coca-Cola Nigeria.
“It is evident that the equipment being presented to us today comes with cutting-edge technology that will aid solution to complex medical conditions. I am certain that this will impact the entire Kwara State and beyond.”
THISDAYLIVE
Coca-Cola Donates $500,000 Worth of Equipment to UITH to Reduce Neonatal Mortality
Hammed Shittu in Ilorin
The management of Coca-Cola Nigeria has donated hospital equipment worth over $500,000 to the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH) as part of intervention to ameliorate maternal and neonatal mortality among women in the country.
Already, the company, under its Safe Birth Initiative (SBI) system, has extended such interventions to about five University Teaching Hospitals in the country. They are National Hospital Abuja; Federal Medical Centre, Ebute-Metta; Federal Medical Centre, Owerri; Wesley Guild Hospital Ilesha; and Alimosho General Hospital.
Speaking in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, yesterday during the presentation of the equipment to the management of UITH in Ilorin under its Safe Birth Initiative (SBI), the Communications Manager of Coca-Cola Nigeria, Mrs. Ifeyinwa Ejindu, said the intervention is meant to reduce the high rate of deaths being recorded during childbirth in Nigeria-both for mothers and newborns.
She noted that the initiative was launched in 2018 to deliver equipment and technical capacity building in tertiary health institutions across Nigeria.
The manager said the company is optimistic that it would contribute in bridging the shortfall in the availability of state-of-the-art medical equipment and skilled manpower to effectively maintain and utilise available equipment.
Ejindu also noted that: “The SBI was launched in 2018 in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Health, the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and US-based group, Medshare International, with a view to supporting and strengthening the country’s healthcare capacity in line with the SDG goals that relate to maternal and new-born mortalities.
“This year’s interventions have seen top-notch equipment donated to the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH), Rivers State, and the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH), Kano.”
According to her, before the kickoff of this year’s SBI, it had reached over 56,000 families with over 21,000 mothers and babies impacted through its social investment programme.
Similarly, under the initiative, she explained that: “Coca-Cola Nigeria has successfully upskilled over 300 biomedical engineers and 400 end-users with requisite knowledge and skills to ensure optimal utilisation of the medical equipment, and their effective maintenance.
“The impact of the SBI could be best appreciated under the background that the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) places the neonatal mortality rate in Nigeria as at 2022 at 56, 220 deaths per 1,000 live births, a 2.57 per cent decline from 2021.
“According to UNICEF, the maternal mortality rate in Nigeria currently contributes to 10 percent of the global
death rate as it stands at 576 per 100,000 live births.
“This means that each year, over 262,000 babies die due to issues such as diarrhea, infection, premature birth, asphyxia, or congenital anomalies.”
Also speaking at the event, the Chief Medical Director, University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, Prof Abdullah D. Yussuf, expressed gratitude at the timely intervention of the Coca-Cola system in the healthcare sector.
Represented at the occasion by the Chairman, Medical Advisory Committee, (C-MAC), UITH, Dr. L.O. Odeigah, he said some of the prominent gains of SBI’s intervention include capacity building, helping to secure accreditation for courses and improved medical care.
He cited the cost savings the institution recorded with the intervention which has seen several moribund medical equipment resuscitated, and the human capacity building which would ensure sustainable use of the equipment and the role played by the equipment in securing accreditation for certain courses b[...]
, Jiang advanced through the ranks of state-controlled industries, working in a food factory, then soap-making and China’s biggest automobile plant.
Like many technocratic officials, Jiang spent part of the ultra-radical 1966-76 Cultural Revolution as a farm laborer. His career rise resumed, and in 1983 he was named minister of the electronics industry, then a key but backward sector the government hoped to revive by inviting foreign investment.
As mayor of Shanghai in 1985-89, Jiang impressed foreign visitors as a representative of a new breed of outward-looking Chinese leaders.
He was preparing to retire when Deng picked him in 1989 to replace party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, who was purged due to his sympathy for the Tiananmen protesters and held under house arrest until his death in 2005.
A tough political fighter, Jiang defied predictions that his stint as leader would be short. He consolidated power by promoting members of his “Shanghai faction” and giving the military double-digit annual percentage increases in spending.
Foreign leaders and CEOs who shunned Beijing after the crackdown were persuaded to return. When Deng emerged from retirement in 1992 to push for reviving market-style reform in the face of conservative opposition after the Tiananmen crackdown, Jiang followed.
He supported Premier Zhu Rongji, the party’s No. 3 leader, who forced through painful changes that slashed as many as 40 million jobs in state industry in the late 1990s.
Zhu also launched the privatization of urban housing, igniting a building boom that transformed Chinese cities into forests of high-rises and propelled economic growth.
After 12 years of negotiations and a flight by Zhu to Washington to lobby the Clinton administration for support, China joined the WTO in 2001, cementing its position as a magnet for foreign investment.
Despite a genial public image, Jiang dealt severely with challenges to ruling party power.
His highest-profile target was Falun Gong, a meditation group founded in the early ’90s. Chinese leaders were spooked by the group’s ability to attract tens of thousands of followers, including military officers.
Activists who tried to form an opposition China Democracy Party, a move permitted by Chinese law, were sentenced to up to 12 years in prison on subversion charges.
“Stability above all else,” Jiang ordered, in a phrase his successors have used to justify intensive social controls.
It fell to Jiang, standing beside Britain’s Prince Charles, to preside over the return of Hong Kong on July 1, 1997, symbolizing the end of 150 years of European colonialism. The nearby Portuguese territory of Macao was returned to China in 1999.
Hong Kong was promised autonomy and became a springboard for mainland companies to go abroad. Meanwhile, Jiang turned to coercion with Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing says is part of its territory.
During Taiwan’s first direct presidential election in 1996, Jiang’s government tried to intimidate voters by firing missiles into nearby shipping lanes. The United States responded by sending warships to the area in a show of support.
At the same time, trade between the mainland and Taiwan grew to billions of dollars a year.
China’s economic boom split society into winners and losers, as waves of rural residents migrated to factory jobs in cities, the economy grew sevenfold and urban incomes by nearly as much.
Protests, once rare, spread as millions lost state jobs and farmers complained about rising taxes and fees. Divorce rates climbed. Corruption flourished.
One of Jiang’s sons, Jiang Mianheng, courted controversy in the late 1990s as a telecommunications dealmaker and later the chairman of phone company China Netcom Co.
Critics accused him of misusing his father’s status to promote his career, a common complaint against the children of party leaders.
Jiang Mianheng, who has a Ph.D. from Drexel University, went on to hold prominent academic positions, including president of Shang[...]
TIME
Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin Has Reportedly Died
BEIJING — Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who led his country out of isolation after the army crushed the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests in 1989 and supported economic reforms that led to a decade of explosive growth, has died, state TV said. He was 96.
Jiang died in Shanghai, state TV reported on its website.
A surprise choice to lead a divided Communist Party after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, Jiang saw China through history-making changes including a revival of market-oriented reforms, the return of Hong Kong from British rule in 1997 and Beijing’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
Even as China opened to the outside, Jiang’s government stamped out dissent at home. It jailed human rights, labor and pro-democracy activists and banned the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which it viewed as a threat to the Communist Party’s monopoly on power.
Jiang gave up his last official title in 2004 but remained a force behind the scenes in the wrangling that led to the rise of current President Xi Jinping, who took power in 2012. Xi has stuck to Jiang’s mix of economic liberalization and strict political controls.
Read More: The World’s Future Is in the Hands of Chinese President Xi Jinping
Initially seen as a transitional leader, Jiang was drafted on the verge of retirement with a mandate from then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping to pull together the party and nation.
But he proved transformative. In 13 years as Communist Party general secretary, the top position in China, he guided China’s rise to global economic power by welcoming capitalists into the Communist Party and pulling in foreign investment after China joined the WTO.
He presided over the nation’s rise as a global manufacturer, the return of Hong Kong and Macao from Britain and Portugal and the achievement of a long-cherished dream: winning the competition to host the Olympic Games after an earlier rejection.
A former soap factory manager, Jiang capped his career with the communist era’s first orderly succession, handing over his post as party leader in 2002 to Hu Jintao, who assumed the presidency the following year.
Jiang tried to hold onto influence by staying on as chairman of the Central Military Commission, which controls the party’s military wing, the 2.3 million-member People’s Liberation Army. He gave up that post in 2004 following complaints he might divide the government.
Even after he left office, Jiang had influence over promotions through his network of proteges.
He was said to be frustrated that Deng had picked Hu as the next leader, blocking Jiang from installing his own successor. But Jiang was considered successful in elevating allies to the party’s seven-member Standing Committee, China’s inner circle of power, when Xi became leader in 2012.
Portly and owlish in oversize glasses, Jiang was an ebullient figure who played the piano and enjoyed singing, in contrast to his more reserved successors, Hu and Xi.
He spoke enthusiastic if halting English and would recite the Gettysburg Address for foreign visitors. On a visit to Britain, he tried to coax Queen Elizabeth II into singing karaoke.
“Jiang had faded from public sight and last appeared publicly alongside current and former leaders atop Beijing’s Tiananmen gate at a 2019 military parade celebrating the party’s 70th anniversary in power. He was absent from a major party congress last month where former leaders are given seats in recognition of their service.
Jiang was born Aug. 17, 1926, in the affluent eastern city of Yangzhou. Official biographies downplay his family’s middle-class background, emphasizing instead his uncle and adoptive father, Jiang Shangqing, an early revolutionary who was killed in battle in 1939.
After graduating from the electrical machinery department of Jiaotong University in Shanghai in 1947[...]
erstanding of abuse that threatens every child. LGBTQ people were attacked by assailants using these very words in public, at drag events and online.
DeSantis insists without proof that “Don’t Say LGBTQ” is about students being “sexualized.” This language and inference is wrong, disgusting and irresponsible. Talking about LGBTQ people and families, like a kindergartener’s two moms or transgender neighbor, is recognition that LGBTQ people exist in our families and worlds. Nearly 21% of Gen Z are out as LGBTQ. Conflating recognition of people’s existence with sex or sex acts is shameful and creepy, even for DeSantis. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is leading the GOP effort in the House to criminalize gender affirming healthcare, despite every major medical association’s support of such care. Among her first acts in office, shortly before being removed from committees for spreading violent conspiracy theories, was to post a anti-transgender sign outside a lawmaker’s office who is the parent of a transgender child. This, too, should have been expected. Greene’s entire record is notable for racist, anti-Semitic, Islamaphobic, transphobic, and homophobic rants, including about a drag story hour at a local library.
This rhetoric and behavior reveals desperation against the growing acceptance of LGBTQ people and the broader awareness about gender diversity and expression. It’s fomented by extremists who seek control by rejecting expertise and lived experience, and social media companies that profit from fear, anger, and polarized politics.
Every media outlet and political reporter must challenge lawmakers and staff recklessly using “groomer” rhetoric. It’s also inaccurate journalism to treat evidence-based healthcare as a “both sides issue,” equating credentialed healthcare providers with craven politicians targeting LGBTQ people. Social media platforms must enforce their policies to protect users from accounts and disinformation threatening others.
Americans are catching on. Voters re-elected governors in four states who vetoed legislation against trans kids, rejecting a $50 million trash ad campaign. Republican governors vetoed anti-trans legislation, correctly acknowledging the losing and inhumane issue for their states and citizens. Shows about drag performers continue to rack up mainstream critical acclaim and adoring audiences sell out drag events. LGBTQ people and straight and cisgender people mingled joyously at Club Q before gunfire erupted.
In describing his heroic actions to save patrons at Club Q, Richard Fierro said, “I was trying to protect my family.” His daughter’s boyfriend, Raymond, was among those killed. We grieve with them and all in our LGBTQ and ally family. Richard’s words should motivate each of us, LGBTQ and not. Families protect each other. We can stop the lies and violence that threaten us. We all deserve to belong—and to be safe.
TIME
No One Should Be Surprised by the Mass Shooting at Club Q
When five people were killed and dozens more injured in a mass shooting at Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, on the eve of Transgender Remembrance Day, the nation was rightfully horrified. But no one should be surprised.
Daniel Aston, Kelly Loving, Ashley Paugh, Derrick Rump, and Raymond Green Vance were enjoying community with their friends, families of origin, and chosen families when they were heinously murdered by a gunman with a history of violence. Their deaths follow an unprecedented surge of anti-LGBTQ legislation, vile rhetoric from politicians and staff, and threats against LGBTQ people by white supremacists who are encouraged by extremists on social media and pundits within right wing media.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
A GLAAD poll conducted just days before the shooting found 48% of all LGBTQ respondents and 72% of transgender respondents are fearful for their personal safety in the current political environment. There is a direct line from dangerous words and behavior to violence against LGBTQ people. GLAAD and other organizations have the receipts to connect the dots:
* More than 300 anti-LGBTQ bills were proposed this year, drafted and funded by longtime anti-LGBTQ groups.
* Politicians, their staff, and enablers smeared LGBTQ people and allies with false and repulsive slurs, with a 406% increase of the slurs online, as bills like “Don’t Say LGBTQ” passed in Florida. LGBTQ people were physically attacked by assailants using the slurs.
* GLAAD documented 124 attacks against drag events in 47 states, including armed white supremacists terrifying children at drag story hours and the firebombing of a donut shop.
* Media Matters counted 170 segments in a three-week span on Fox News with anti-transgender fearmongering and disinformation including the lie that transgender kids ‘have been led to where they are by adult predators.’
* More than 2,500 books were challenged or banned September 2021 to September 2022, the majority about LGBTQ characters and LGBTQ authors.
* Extremist politicians with zero engagement with transgender people proposed bills to restrict their healthcare, which is supported by every major medical association and public health authority.
* When extremist politicians couldn’t pass bans on trans healthcare, they weaponized state agencies to baselessly investigate parents of trans kids, and orchestrated sham tribunals stacked with anti-LGBTQ donors to stop doctors from providing care.
* Social media accounts and right wing media dared followers to act and they did: at least twenty children’s hospitals endured bomb threats.
* Extremist state politicians withheld funds from federal taxpayers for mental health care unless hospitals refused to treat trans youth.
Here’s how this unfolds in real life.
In August 2022, pro-gun and anti-LGBTQ Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert warned that “all the drag queens out there” to “stay away from the children in Colorado’s Third District!,” as well as falsely and absurdly claimed that those affirming LGBTQ youth are “groomers.” This reflects Boebert’s unapologetic pattern of denigrating LGBTQ people, directing hate at trans people and drag performers. In fact, she regretted not using the slur more.
Read More: The Attack on a Gay Bar in Colorado Springs Didn’t Happen in a Vacuum
Eight bills have been proposed to restrict drag events: a federal bill, two bills in Texas, and one in Michigan, among others. Politicians like Gov. Ron DeSantis, his enablers, and others smeared LGBTQ people and allies with words like “groomer” and “predator” in their campaigns and to push laws censoring classroom conversation about sexual orientation and gender identity.
This rhetoric explicitly endangers LGBTQ people and all children. Experts in child abuse say using “groomer” rhetoric to attack political rivals dangerously undermines und[...]
n the two leadership teams highlights a difference between the two parties’ priorities. “I don’t think the Republicans have ever had to pay a price for not fielding the same percentage of female candidates as the Democrats have, or for not electing the same percentage of people of color as the Democrats have,” she says. “I do think that, as far as the voters who have really turned out for Democratic candidates the last few cycles are concerned, this signals that their efforts paid off.”
Leadership has remained largely homogeneous in both parties in the Senate. Every Democratic leader in Senate history has been a white man. The same is nearly true for Republicans, with the exception of Charles Curtis, a member of the Kaw Nation who would become the nation’s Vice President under President Herbert Hoover after several years as Senate Majority Leader.
Since Republicans will soon control the House, it may be some time before the diverse new Democratic leadership team gets to exercise its power. Kenneth Lowande, an assistant professor of political science and public policy at the University of Michigan, has studied the impact of representation in Congress. If Democrats retake the House, Lowande expects that the new leadership team might prompt more votes on legislation that would benefit underrepresented communities and install more diverse members in positions on key committees.
Those changes could be years away, but with slow leadership turnover, Democrats’ vote on Wednesday is a crucial first step. “I’d say that really what this is,” Lowande says, “is the groundwork for something bigger.”
TIME
House Democrats Expected to Pick Top Leadership That Includes Zero White Men—A First for Congress
When Nancy Pelosi this month announced the end of her historic tenure as the first female Speaker of the House, she set the stage for another historic shift in American politics: for the first time in U.S. history, the top ranks of House leadership for one party won’t include any white men.
“It has been with great pride in my 35 years in the House I have seen this body grow more reflective of our great nation, our beautiful nation,” Pelosi said in her retirement speech on November 17. “We have brought more voices to the decision-making table.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
House Democrats are set to vote on their new leaders on Wednesday. The predicted ascendancy of Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, and Pete Aguilar of California to House Democratic leader, whip, and caucus chair respectively will revamp the face of a body that has historically been controlled by old white men. And it will mark the first time ever for either party in either chamber of Congress to have no white men in any of the top leadership positions.
“The institution itself makes it difficult for non-white males to rise in leadership,” says Arturo Vargas, CEO of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. “People tend to hang out with people who are like themselves. And I think that has always been part of the barrier for Latinos, African Americans, and women to rise in leadership.”
The expected new Democratic leaders come from very different backgrounds, but all have years of leadership experience in Congress, and experts say their rise demonstrates how the women and people of color have finally had the time to build institutional power in the House. “It’s taken this long in history, a couple centuries plus, for there to be a critical mass of non-white males in the House of Representatives within a particular party, having risen in seniority, and having demonstrated that their leadership capabilities are as good or better as anybody else’s,” Vargas says.
Jeffries, who is expected to become the first Black leader of either political party, has served as caucus chair since 2019. Clark, who represents the suburbs of Boston, became assistant speaker last year. Aguilar, who is of Mexican descent, represents San Bernardino County and has already served as caucus vice chair, making him the highest-ranking Latino in Congress. They are joined by Jim Clyburn, the 82-year-old Black South Carolinian who is currently House majority whip and is expected to become assistant Democratic leader.
The historic new leadership team is gaining power at tumultuous moment for people of color in America. After the 2020 murder of George Floyd and ensuing Black Lives Matter demonstrations, Americans elected the most racially diverse Congress in history. But a backlash over discussions around structural racism has also flourished, as the way such issues are taught in schools and in books available at libraries have become political flash points.
Quentin James, the founder of the Collective PAC, which works to build Black political power, is excited about House Democratic leadership. But he’s also anticipating resistance. “I think it is indicative of what’s happening across the country,” he says. “[America] is in a moment of transition, where people who’ve been in power have to now share that power. And I think we see what that means for many of them: the rise of antisemitic behavior, the rise of white supremacy. We see, in my opinion, kids acting out, them not wanting to share their power or leadership.”
On the Republican side, white men still dominate House leadership. Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of New York is the only woman in a top spot. Jennifer Lawless, the Commonwealth Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, says that the contrast betwee[...]
SkySports | News
Neville: Rashford is back on it | He has to start vs Senegal
Gary Neville believes Marcus Rashford is back to his best form and has earned his place in England's team for their crucial World Cup last-16 match against Senegal.
SkySports | News
World Cup looks a tournament too far for some ageing stars
When Harry Kane went to shake hands with United States midfielder Tyler Adams before kick-off, he was up against the only captain at this World Cup who is younger than him. In fact, he was up against the only other captain in Qatar under the age of 30.
proteges. He was considered successful in elevating allies to the party’s seven-member Standing Committee, China’s inner circle of power, when Xi became leader in 2012.
Jiang faded from view and last appeared publicly alongside current and former leaders atop Beijing’s Tiananmen Gate at a 2019 military parade celebrating the party’s 70th anniversary in power.
Jiang was born Aug. 17, 1926, in the affluent eastern city of Yangzhou. Official biographies downplay his family’s middle-class background, emphasizing instead his uncle and adoptive father, Jiang Shangqing, an early revolutionary who was killed in battle in 1939.
After graduating from the electrical machinery department of Jiaotong University in Shanghai in 1947, Jiang advanced through the ranks of state-controlled industries, working in a food factory, then soap-making and China’s biggest automobile plant.
Like many technocratic officials, Jiang spent part of the ultra-radical 1966-76 Cultural Revolution as a farm laborer. His career revived after that and in 1983 he was named minister of the electronics industry, then a key but backward sector the government hoped to revive by inviting foreign investment.
As mayor of Shanghai between 1985 and 1989, Jiang impressed foreign visitors as a representative of a new breed of outward-looking Chinese leaders.
A tough political fighter, Jiang defied predictions that his stint as leader would be short. He consolidated power by promoting members of his “Shanghai faction” and giving the military double-digit annual percentage increases in spending.
Foreign leaders and CEOs who shunned Beijing after the Tiananmen crackdown were persuaded to return.
When Deng emerged from retirement in 1992 to push for reviving market-style reform, Jiang also took up the cause.
He supported Premier Zhu Rongji, the party’s No. 3 leader, who forced through painful changes that slashed as many as 40 million jobs from state industry in the late 1990s.
Zhu launched the privatization of urban housing, igniting a building boom that transformed Chinese cities into forests of high-rises and propelled economic growth.
After 12 years of negotiations and a flight by Zhu to Washington to lobby the Clinton administration for support, China joined the WTO in 2001, cementing its position as a magnet for foreign investment.
China’s economic boom split society into winners and losers as waves of rural residents migrated to factory jobs in cities, the economy grew sevenfold and urban incomes by nearly as much.
Protests, once rare, spread as millions lost state jobs and farmers complained about rising taxes and fees. Divorce rates climbed. Corruption flourished.
Despite a genial public image, Jiang dealt severely with challenges to ruling party power.
His highest-profile target was Falun Gong, a meditation group founded in the early 1990s. Chinese leaders were spooked by its ability to attract tens of thousands of followers, including military officers.
Activists who tried to form an opposition China Democracy Party, a move permitted by Chinese law, were sentenced to up to 12 years in prison on subversion charges.
“Stability above all else,” Jiang ordered, in a phrase his successors have used to justify intensive social controls.
It fell to Jiang, standing beside Britain’s Prince Charles, to preside over the return of Hong Kong on July 1, 1997, symbolizing the end of 150 years of European colonialism. The nearby Portuguese territory of Macao was returned to China in 1999.
Hong Kong was promised autonomy and became a springboard for mainland companies that want to do business abroad. Meanwhile, Jiang turned to coercion with Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing says is part of its territory.
During Taiwan’s first direct presidential election in 1996, Jiang’s government tried to intimidate voters by firing missiles into nearby shipping lanes. The United States responded by sending warships to the area in a show of support.
At the same time, trade between t[...]
Tsinghua University, where students protested over the weekend, and other schools in the capital and the southern province of Guangdong sent students home in an apparent attempt to defuse tensions. Chinese leaders are wary of universities, which have been hotbeds of activism including the Tiananmen protests.
Police appeared to be trying to keep their crackdown out of sight, possibly to avoid encouraging others by drawing attention to the scale of the protests. Videos and posts on Chinese social media about protests were deleted by the party's vast online censorship apparatus.
"Zero-COVID" has helped keep case numbers lower than those of the United States and other major countries, but global health experts including the head of the World Health Organization increasingly say it is unsustainable. China dismissed the remarks as irresponsible.
Beijing needs to make its approach "very targeted" to reduce economic disruption, the head of the International Monetary Fund told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.
"We see the importance of moving away from massive lockdowns," said IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva in Berlin. "So that targeting allows to contain the spread of COVID without significant economic costs."
Economists and health experts, however, warn that Beijing can't relax controls that keep most travelers out of China until tens of millions of older people are vaccinated. They say that means "zero-COVID" might not end for as much as another year.
On Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said restrictions were, among other things, making it impossible for U.S. diplomats to meet with American prisoners being held in China, as is mandated by international treaty. Because of a lack of commercial airline routes into the "COVID is really dominating every aspect of life" in China, he said in an online discussion with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
On the protests, Burns said the embassy was observing their progress and the government's response, but said, "We believe the Chinese people have a right to protest peacefully."
"They have a right to make their views known. They have a right to be heard. That's a fundamental right around the world. It should be. And that right should not be hindered with, and it shouldn't be interfered with," he said/
Burns also referenced instances of Chinese police harassing and detaining foreign reporters covering the protests.
"We support freedom of the press as well as freedom of speech," he said.
Top Stories - Google News
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THISDAYLIVE
Review Panels: Be Humble Enough to Admit Your Blunders, APC Tells Adeleke
Yinka Kolawole in Osogbo
The Osun State All Progressives Congress (APC) has described the setting up of various review panels by the state Governor, Ademola Adeleke, as an afterthought and one designed to arrive at predetermined outcomes.
The party also called on the governor to settle down to study the handover notes so as to prevent the blunders he is allegedly committing.
It also urged him to be humble enough to accept his blunders so far.
Adeleke had while delivering his inaugural speech announced the invalidation of some of the decisions of his predecessor, including the sacking of some workers. He, however, promised to back it up with an Executive Order the next day.
By yesterday, he reeled out the Executive Orders where he announced the sacking of workers and take-over of three palaces by security agents while asking the occupants to step aside.
However, by yesterday morning, his spokesperson, Mallam Olawale Rasheed, claimed that they neither sacked any worker nor dethrone any monarch.
He said: “There was never a sack of any worker or traditional ruler. We only set up review panel. It is impossible to sack and put review panel in place. The review panel is to look at the numbers of the people that were employed, due processes of the employment, and qualification among other things.”
But the APC believes that both Adelekeand his spokesperson are confused.
In a statement signed by its Director of Operations, Hon. Sunday Akere, the APC said: “We told you from day one that these people have nothing to offer. We can all see from their first action that they are even confused.
“They had told us long ago that they were coming to sack. They came and announced it. Why set up a panel after taking a decision? What they are doing can be likened to doing ablution after observing prayers. Who does that?
“You have asked traditional rulers to step aside, yet you want a panel to do a review. Are they taking up the role of the judiciary as well because we are aware that some of the cases are already in court? Furthermore, we know for a fact that our government enthroned over 20 monarchs before we left. Why focus on just three? And of these three, one was our former party chairman. Is there no political undertone in all of these?
“Nigerians must be aware that the panels are going to work from the answers. And since the answers are known, why waste taxpayers’ money unnecessarily? The governor should be humble enough to admit his blunders. He appears to lack the basic understanding of how governance works.”
THISDAYLIVE
Reverse All ‘Illega’l Actions, Policies of Oyetola’s Govt, Activist Tells Adeleke
Yinka Kolawole in Osogbo
A human rights activist and Executive Chairman, Centre for Human Rights and Social Justice(CHRSJ), Adeniyi, Alimi Sulaiman, has urged the new Governor of Osun State, Senator Ademola Adeleke, to reverse all the last minutes perceived illegal actions and policies of the immediate-past administration of Governor Gboyega Oyetola through the due process of law.
Sulaiman, who declared that it became imperative at this point in time of transition of Oyetola’s government to the new administration of Adeleke in order to save the state and the new administration from impending calamities which Oyetola’s government had concluded plan to put the new administration into.
The rights activist said all the recent decisions taken by Oyetola’s administration, were the clogs in the wheel of progress of the state, noting that the new administration of Senator Adeleke should avoid anything that could bring cacophony of noise that could lead to political, communal and administrative crises for the new government as a result of recent unjust decisions of Oyetola’s administration.
He further stressed that all such decisions taken before and after the July 16, 2022, were taken not for the interest of the good people of the state but with the sole aim of causing political, bureaucratic, administrative and communal crisis for Adeleke’s new administration.
This was contained in a signed congratulatory message to the new governor of the state and the people of the state.
Sulaiman, who doubles as the national coordinator, Osun West Political Agenda (OWEPA), disclosed that there was no ambiguity in the actions and policies of any government across the world, but stated that the last three months actions and policies of Oyetola till the end of the administration, shown clearly “a fait accompli.”
While congratulating Senator Ademola Adeleke as he takes the mantle of leadership of the state, he advised the new governor to be proactive in righting all the wrongs of Oyetola’s government, particularly the decisions taken immediately after the July 16, 2022, governorship election when Adeleke has been declared the winner of the poll by the electoral umpire.
Sulaiman who also described Oyetola’s government as lawless administration, which flagrantly disregard the court pronouncements at will in order to serve the whims and caprices of the few elements in the state, said: “No serious government will follow its foot path.”
According to him “To us in CHRSJ, the stability of the government of Adeleke in the interest of people of Osun State, is our priority and it would be a great disservice to the good people of the state if Adeleke refuses to reverse all the illegal actions of Oyetola’s government, and it would amount to sitting on the keg of gun powder that would explode in no distance time.”
THISDAYLIVE
Bauchi Inaugurates Steering Committee on Open Govt Partnership
Segun Awofadeji in Bauchi
Bauchi State Government yesterday inaugurated the state Steering Committee on Open Government Partnership (OGP) with members of Government and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs).
The Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Ibrahim Kashim, while inaugurating the committee at the Government House in Bauchi, said the state government has since signed into the OGP in order to enjoy the full portfolio of OGP processes, capacities and benefits attached.
He said the inauguration of the state Steering Committee is a clear commitment of the present administration towards ensuring that Bauchi joins other states in the country in the implementation of global best practices relating to OGP thus bringing the citizens more closely to the government.
Kashim, who is the state co-Chairman of the Steering Committee, recalled that Open Government Partnership is an international multi-stakeholder’s initiative focused on improving transparency, accountability, citizen participation and responsiveness to citizens through technology and innovation.
According to him, the Open Government Partnership remains a viable platform for civil society organisations to constructively engage government at all levels on an ongoing, real-time basis, thereby ensuring more responsive governance.
The SSG also noted that the OGP engagements stand as a strategic sustainability pillar for the World Bank’s SFTAS grants to the states, helping OGP states to become committed to continuous implementation of the principles of open and transparent governance, as contained in the SFTAS disbursement linked indicators (DLIS) within the OGP co-creation approach and monitored through the independent report mechanism of the global OGP forum.
On her part, the co-Chair of Non-State Actors, Maryam Garba, commended the state government for the inauguration of the committee, and assured it that the civil society organisations in the state will support the initiative for its effective implementation.
haiTech University in his father’s old power base.
Jiang is survived by his two sons and his wife, Wang Yeping, who worked in government bureaucracies in charge of state industries.
riend that he deceived their whole bar-trivia crew into believing he had a master’s degree.
Then things get messy, in a way that simultaneously calls into question the extent of Fielder’s behind-the-scenes manipulations, how acclimated viewers have become to the routine deceptions of reality TV, and whether it’s possible to game out the risks of your own life without harming the people you enlist in that project. The experiment grows more philosophically convoluted and introspective with each episode. Meanwhile, The Rehearsal captures difficult truths about American life in 2022, from pandemic-era loneliness to unapologetic antisemitism.
Much of the chatter around the show has centered around attempts to classify Fielder as either “cruel and arrogant” or an intrepid explorer of the human psyche. While I’m firmly in the latter camp, I also think his personality is beside the point. Like all television, the show establishes a rapport with the viewer—but instead of immersing us in a fantasy, it’s designed to make us hyper-aware of our responses to the images it presents. Not since Twin Peaks: The Return has the medium so insightfully mirrored our fraught relationships to the entertainment we consume. 1. Better Call Saul (AMC)One of TV’s greatest sagas came to an end (for now, at least) this past summer, when creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould wrapped up Better Call Saul after six unforgettable seasons. Way back in the winter of 2008, just months after Mad Men premiered as its first original drama series, AMC rolled out Gilligan’s cinematic crime drama Breaking Bad, about a milquetoast chemistry teacher whose terminal cancer diagnosis unlocked a limitless potential for cruelty and violence. More than a decade later, that series’ unlikely conscience, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), returned in El Camino, a feature film that gave him the action-hero ending he deserved.
But in the final accounting, Saul—a spin-off that most Breaking Bad fans, myself included, feared would be terrible—is the epochal masterpiece of the bunch. A prequel and a sequel, it literally bookends the saga, offsetting Walter White’s (Bryan Cranston) morally black-and-white descent into evil with the more ambiguous tale of two characters trying to be good people who can’t find a way to be good together. Initially a flailing public defender, Bob Odenkirk’s Jimmy McGill is a supposedly rehabilitated delinquent who slowly devolves into a walking mockery of the justice system named Saul Goodman. The love of his life, Rhea Seehorn’s Kim Wexler, has an internal sense of justice too keen to abide either the legally sanctioned cruelty of corporate law or the violence and malice of Saul’s work in Albuquerque’s criminal demimonde.
Gilligan and Gould never missed an opportunity to give their lawyer show about the inevitable perversion of justice another layer of meaning. At the same time, they made one of the most visually gorgeous, carefully plotted, and emotionally involving shows in the history of TV. Their vision came to life thanks to tremendous performances by Odenkirk and Seehorn, along with co-stars Michael Mando, Jonathan Banks, Giancarlo Esposito, Michael McKean, and too many other cast members to list. Intelligent to the core, Better Call Saul was also, for all its blood and death, the most fundamentally humanistic drama of its time. Months later, I’m still marveling at how it found a way, in the end, to celebrate Kim and Jimmy without letting Saul off the hook.
Honorable mentions: Abbott Elementary (ABC), Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (AMC), Barry (HBO), Conversations With Friends (Hulu), The Girl From Plainville (Hulu), Irma Vep (HBO Max), Search Party (HBO Max), Sort Of (HBO Max), What We Do in the Shadows (FX)
Promising shows whose new seasons I couldn’t screen in full: Kindred (FX), The White Lotus (HBO)
piction of economic inequality in healthcare, for providers and patients alike, brings rare honesty to a cliché-ridden medical-drama genre that celebrates individual doctors’ extraordinary feats at the expense of telling the truth about their exhausted real-life counterparts’ often-dangerous working conditions. This Is Going to Hurt isn’t all misery; it preserves the biting humor of its source material, a memoir by physician turned author Adam Kay, and Whishaw’s disappearance into the role of a brash, prickly, young gay man with one foot out of the closet is a pleasure to behold. When the show does ultimately break our hearts, the pain is well worth the epiphanies that come with it. 4. Reservation Dogs (FX on Hulu)Sterling Harjo and Taika Waititi’s groundbreaking dramedy about teens growing up on an Oklahoma reservation in the wake of their lifelong friend’s suicide couldn’t have gotten off to a stronger start last year. Even so, the show improved by leaps and bounds in its sophomore season, using viewers’ familiarity with the Rez Dogs, their families, and other local characters to expand its funny, poignant portrait of the community. Showrunner Harjo and his writers spend one episode following Zahn McClarnon’s beleaguered cop on a psychedelic misadventure and another with a cohort of middle-aged women known as “the Aunties” as they cut loose (or try to) at the annual Indian Health Services conference. Yet the show never loses sight of its central characters, four young people on the verge of adulthood whose hopes, fears, frustrations, and mourning converged in a stunning season finale written by the Kumeyaay poet Tommy Pico. 3. Severance (Apple TV+)Between the recent proliferation of superhero spinoffs, fantasy epics, and space operas and the streaming-era renaissance of the miniseries and various anthology formats, the future of grounded, original, multi-season TV drama has begun to look pretty bleak. Severance, conceived by first-time creator Dan Erickson and directed, marvelously, by Ben Stiller, isn’t just the year’s best new narrative show; it’s also the year’s best argument that it’s still possible to make a serious, serialized drama that is populated by authentic characters, addresses real social issues, and isn’t adapted from pre-existing intellectual property. So what if that show—which follows employees at a dystopian megacorp who agree to have their consciousnesses surgically bifurcated, “severing” the people they are at the office from the people they are outside of it—also happens to have a chilling sci-fi premise?
Instead of relying on elaborate virtual-production setups and other trendy tech, Severance is a triumph of good old-fashioned writing, directing, and acting. From icons like Patricia Arquette, John Turturro, and Christopher Walken to comedy pros like Adam Scott and Zak Cherry to breakout Britt Lower, who’s riveting as a new recruit who can’t forgive her “outie” self for consigning her to a life of indentured labor, the performances are essentially flawless. Stiller’s direction sets a tone that’s equal parts absurdist and tragic. It’s all tied together, and tethered to work-life realities as many of us know them, by writing that resonates on the level of individual lines of dialogue but soars thanks to the intricate plot architecture Erickson put in place. 2. The Rehearsal (HBO)Watch the first episode of Nathan Fielder’s follow up to Nathan for You, the Comedy Central series that deployed the creator as a deranged consultant to struggling small businesses, and you’ll find a kinder variation on that predecessor. Fielder explains that his social-engineering comedy had led him to rehearse a wide range of uncomfortable interactions so that he’d be prepared for every possible response to his bonkers marketing ideas. In The Rehearsal, he sets out to use that technique for good, helping regular people rehearse tough confessions and big life decisions. The relatively self-contained premiere finds him training a teacher to confess to a f[...]
son 1 after he planted spyware in her brain, in exchange for a potentially life-saving cancer treatment for her father Herbert (Ray Romano), whom she has to actively trick into receiving it. The setup escalated into a witty, trenchant, and depressingly timely allegory for the tech sphere’s dangerous conflation of connection and control that was, sadly, canceled before it could offer a third season’s worth of commentary. Here’s looking at you, looking at us, Elon. 8. Derry Girls (Netflix)A gloriously lifelike 30-foot mural of Derry Girls‘ teen protagonists presides over the Northern Irish city, where Bloody Sunday unfolded in 1972 and the Troubles dominated the 20th century. It’s not even a paid advertisement. Such is the affection the local community—and the world—developed for these four Catholic school girls (and one girl’s tag-along male cousin) over the course of three ’90s-set seasons inspired by creator Lisa McGee’s own Derry adolescence. You can see why. While the political context, glimpsed in TV news footage and alluded to in casual conversation, is wrenching, the juxtaposition of a world-historical conflict with the bubbly self-involvement of high schoolers makes for one of the funniest comedies you’ll ever see. Spanning just 19 episodes, the show had precisely zero weak moments. But this year’s final season was a particular stunner, filled with road-trip misadventures and A-list guest stars and first love. It all led up to the fateful Good Friday Agreement referendum, in a perfect series finale that had me doubled over with laughter one second and reaching for the Kleenex the next. 7. Atlanta Season 4 (FX)It’s been a strange 2022 for Atlanta, which took a four-year, COVID-extended hiatus after its second season and then returned to close out its run with two full seasons that aired this spring and fall. Because half of the already-legendary series’ total episodes were squished into nine months, the unevenness of season 3’s European hijinks and standalone parables featuring zero regular cast members might’ve made some viewers less eager to dig into its fourth and final season. But I’m telling you: don’t miss it. Season 4 brought creator and star Donald Glover’s Earn, his rapper cousin Alfred (Brian Tyree Henry), his daughter’s mom Van (Zazie Beetz), and their stoner buddy Darius (LaKeith Stanfield) back to their hometown with money to burn. In episodes that ranged from an acerbic mockumentary about a fictional Black Disney CEO to a camping-trip romance that could make you tear up, Atlanta took its wild ride to the intersection of Blackness, wealth, fame, and art making. Along with Glover’s typical keen social commentary and surreal humor, the season did right by the show’s central characters, yielding precisely the thoughtful and moving, if not necessarily happily-ever-after, resolutions they deserved. 6. Better Things (FX)An auteur’s magnum opus. A first-time TV creator’s laboratory. A very funny comedy. An art film for the small screen. An unflinching portrait of the artist, or one version of her, as a middle-aged woman. A sharp commentary on Hollywood misogyny and ageism. The best show ever made about single motherhood. Pamela Adlon’s Better Things was all of this, sometimes all at once, throughout its five seasons (which might explain its conspicuously vague title). Just as her alter ego Sam Fox was always juggling work, parenting three kids, and intermittent attempts at post-divorce romance, Adlon juggled her characters’ internal lives, holding space for each perspective in every scene. That convergence gave the show its own surprising sense of balance; half an hour with the Foxes could feel as refreshing as meditation. In streaming’s era of peak redundancy, it’s a shame as well as a compliment that there’s nothing else like it on TV. 5. This Is Going to Hurt (AMC+)True to its title, this British import starring the great Ben Whishaw as an overworked OB-GYN in a public hospital lands several punches to the gut. But its unvarnished de[...]
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TIME
The 10 Best TV Shows of 2022
The streaming gold rush couldn’t last forever. From a business perspective, TV has had a pretty rough year, from Netflix’s financial woes to Warner Bros. Discovery’s post-merger growing pains to this month’s shocking news that former Disney CEO Bob Iger had replaced his successor Bob Chapek at the company’s helm, following the revelation that Disney+ was gaining a lot of subscribers but losing a lot of money. Like many other tech-driven niches, from digital media to rideshare apps, streaming seems to be seeing the price tag of rapid expansion exceed the revenue generated by even the most auspicious uptick in users. The dilemma of how to cut costs without hemorrhaging subscribers remains unsolved, and may indeed be unsolvable.
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Of course, for those of us who care more about TV as an art form than we do about its revolving door of executives and growth strategies, the most urgent question at the end of 2022 is: What’s going to happen to the shows I love? The short answer is that it could take years before what we see on our screens fully reflects the fallout of the past several months’ streaming shakeups. But it’s also true that platforms were preparing for a wholly predictable contraction in an overcrowded streaming landscape long before Netflix released its Q2 report. In that sense, this year’s unprecedented glut of expensive genre spectacles and prestige-branded docudramas might well herald an era when every greenlit project must justify its existence with blockbuster viewership numbers or the potential for multiple Emmy nominations. So much for the long tail.
You won’t find much from either dominant category among my favorite series of 2022. It probably isn’t a coincidence that what you will find are more shows that ended their runs than shows that debuted this year. While that doesn’t make me especially optimistic going into 2023, I’d be remiss not to acknowledge that great, idiosyncratic, sui generis television is still getting made—and that, in fact, two of the year’s three best shows turned out to be new titles based on original ideas. As long as fresh concepts are being pitched and writers’ rooms are being assembled, there will be hope for TV, no matter who’s sitting on any corporation’s Iron Throne. 10. Rap Sh!t (HBO Max)Since soaring to the entertainment-industry stratosphere with Insecure, Issa Rae has become one of TV’s most in-demand creators. Her new, Miami-set hip-hop comedy Rap Sh!t proves she doesn’t have to be on screen to make something great. Relative newcomers Aida Osman and KaMillion shine as high school friends whose mismatched lives become intertwined again after a late-night freestyle propels them to fame as a rap duo. The influence of Miami rappers City Girls, who are among the series’ executive producers, is palpable in its regional details, realistic portrait of the contemporary music business, and radio-ready original songs. And the show brings art and nuance to thorny subjects from social media to sex work. Like Insecure, it’s smart, sexy, attuned to the vicissitudes of friendship and the struggles of the ambitious yet broke. But it’s also entirely its own thing—a comedy as fresh, sharp, and inspired as its heroines’ rhymes. 9. Made for Love (HBO Max)In this, the year crypto crashed, stocks burned, and the richest man in the world gave new meaning to the phrase “tweeting through it,” no satire of an industry torched by its own hubris hit as hard as Made for Love. Enjoyable but a tad timid in its first season, co-creator Alissa Nutting’s adaptation of her own taboo-busting 2017 novel got smarter, weirder, and many shades darker in a second season set mostly within the invisible cage of multibillionaire Gogol Industries CEO Byron Gogol’s (Billy Magnussen) corporate-HQ-slash-dream-home-slash-prison, the Hub. Antiheroine Hazel (Cristin Milioti) has returned to Byron, the ex-husband she fled in sea[...]
ead of government to taste cultivated meat in public, sampling Aleph Farms steak on Dec. 7, 2020. “It’s delicious and guilt-free, I can’t taste the difference,” he said, pledging that “Israel will become a powerhouse for alternative meat and alternative protein.” President Isaac Herzog tried cultivated chicken nearly a year later, becoming the first, and so far, only president to do so. In April this year, the Israel Innovation Authority funneled $18 million into a newly formed cultivated meat consortium made up of 14 Israeli companies and 10 academic labs working together to bring down costs and scale up production. And in September, the government declared “food tech, with an emphasis on alternative proteins” as one of five national R&D priorities.
https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/pond-scum-caviar-green-onyx.jpg?w=560&w=560 <figcaptionTal Shahar + Achikam Ben-YosefA pond-scum (duckweed)-based caviar made by GreenOnyx, shown at the FoodTech IL 2022 conference.
In terms of government support for the nascent industry, Israel is rivaled only by Singapore, which was the first country to allow the sale of cultivated chicken produced by American start-up GOOD Meat (then known as Eat Just) in December 2020. But Singapore trails behind Israel when it comes to scientific research and development, says Nir Goldstein, managing director of GFI Israel. Part of Israel’s progress is due to the looming sense of urgency—”we understand that the Israeli contribution to the climate change battle can be in protein innovation,” he says, but a lot of the sector’s success comes down to sheer chutzpah, according to founders of several alt-protein companies. “We grow up in challenge and conflict, so the Israeli mindset is all about solving problems. That leads to innovation,” says Arik Kaufman, the CEO of Steakholder Foods. He just wishes that Israel would follow Singapore’s lead and push for regulatory approval of commercial sales. He has no doubt that cultivated meat would do well in Israel.
According to a 2017 survey, the most recent available, 5% of Israelis are vegan, 8% are vegetarian, and another 23% said that they wanted to reduce meat consumption. Even the Israeli army supplies vegan meals, leatherless boots, and wool-free berets for its recruits. And while cultivated meat, which is real meat minus the slaughter, may not tempt those who have sworn off animal products entirely, it is likely to appeal to a population already attuned to the waste, climate impacts, and inhumane treatment of industrial animal farming. Jewish laws regarding Kosher meat slaughter, as well as prohibitions against mixing meat and milk, keep consumers mindful of where their food comes from, even if they aren’t particularly religious, says Yonatan Golan, the CEO of Brevel, which makes a plant-based cheese using microalgae. “In Judaism, you have to wait several hours between eating milk and meat, so you have to be innovative with your dessert. Or you might want to innovate with your dinner because you do want to eat that creamy dessert. It creates a whole ecosystem of innovation, and an openness to trying new things.”
Whether or not a cultivated meat burger served with plant-based cheese would pass Judaism’s strictest food laws remains to be seen. But focusing on climate-friendly foods that avoid animal suffering follows another tenet of Judaism, says Yoav Reisler, senior manager for marketing at Aleph Farms. He uses the phrase Tikkun Olam, Hebrew for “repairing the world,” that is often used in reference to social actions. “Cultured meat is one of the solutions to correct the world for a better purpose.”
TIME
How Israel Became the Global Center For Alternative Meat Tech
At the annual Food Tech Israel conference held in Tel Aviv on Nov. 7, exhibitioners offered samples of hydroponically-grown vanilla, reduced-sugar sugar, protein bars with all the benefits of breast milk, and a kind of modified pond scum with the texture of caviar and a whiff of wheatgrass—the taste of a futuristic food-scape. But by far the biggest lines could be found in front of the stands offering up more traditional expo fare: lamb kebabs, pulled beef pitas and burger sliders. Those with invitations to private tastings dined on steaks, roast beef with potatoes, chicken sausages, and triangles of gooey grilled cheese sandwiches. It was enough to make even the most committed carnivore crave a salad.
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But it was a scene even a vegan would enjoy. The cheese was produced from microalgae, and the roast beef—as succulent and savory as the real thing—was made from fermented plant proteins. The kebabs, burgers, and pulled beef were plant based; the chicken and steak, served offsite by SuperMeat and Aleph Farms respectively, were cultivated from biopsied stem cells in bioreactors. About the only animal-based product to be found at the venue was a lonely quart of cow’s milk tucked behind a phalanx of plant-based alternatives at the coffee stand.
The future of Israeli food technology, it would seem, does not include animals. Israel is second only to the United States in terms of start-ups and investments when it comes to alternative protein companies, receiving nearly $1 billion from investors since 2020. A country that boasts the highest per-capita consumption of poultry, the fourth-highest consumption of red meat, and yet is still home to the world’s highest percentage of vegans, Israel is well situated for incubating a new meat revolution with world-wide ambitions. Three of the first eight cultivated meat companies in the world started in Israel, and all three—Aleph Farms, Super Meat and Believer Meats, along with Nasdaq-listed newcomer Steakholder Foods—are poised for international distribution once local food regulators authorize sales of lab-grown meat.
Read more: Lab Grown Chicken Gets a Green Light From the FDA
Given its history as a politically isolated state in a water-poor region, Israel has long been forced to innovate when it comes to its food sector. Between advances in water desalination, greenhouse construction, precision irrigation, and hydroponics, the country has grown into an ag-tech powerhouse. But it is still not self-sufficient in food. Israel’s poultry and dairy industries supply more than 90% of domestic demand, yet they rely on imported grain that must come in overseas—the borders with Lebanon and Syria are closed by ongoing conflict, and trade with neighbors Jordan and Egypt is nearly non-existent due to political tensions over its illegal annexation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank.
Meanwhile, a growing population—both in Israel, and in the Palestinian West Bank— is driving up real-estate prices and cutting into arable land. Water shortages caused by climate change are making irrigation of new crops less predictable and more costly. “Land here is scarce, and water is expensive. This is why we must focus on innovation,” says Didier Toubia, the CEO and co-founder of Aleph Farms. According to the Good Food Institute (GFI), an international advocacy and research institution that promotes alternative protein technologies, cultivated meat—grown from stem cells in a bioreactor—reduces water use by up to 78% and cuts land requirements by up to 95%, compared to conventional beef farming.
Acutely aware of the limits of conventional animal agriculture, the Israeli government is promoting alternative proteins as an economic growth engine, a technology to mitigate the climate crisis, and as a food security asset. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the world’s first h[...]
SkySports | News
Beale hopes to keep Kent & Morelos | 'Rangers will chase down Celtic in title race'
In part two of our exclusive interview with Michael Beale, the new Rangers boss discusses January transfers, the futures of Ryan Kent and Alfredo Morelos, plus the title race.
he mainland and Taiwan grew to billions of dollars a year.
One of Jiang’s sons, Jiang Mianheng, courted controversy as a telecommunications dealmaker in the late 1990s, when critics accused him of misusing his father’s status to promote his career, a common complaint against the children of party leaders.
Jiang is survived by his two sons and his wife, Wang Yeping, who worked in government bureaucracies in charge of state industries.
Voice of America
Jiang Zemin, Who Guided China’s Economic Rise, Dies
Jiang Zemin, who led China out of isolation after the army crushed the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests in 1989 and supported economic reforms that led to a decade of explosive growth, died Wednesday. He was 96.
Jiang, who was president for a decade until 2003 and led the ruling Communist Party for 13 years until 2002, died of leukemia and multiple organ failure in Shanghai, state media reported. The party declared him a “great proletarian revolutionary” and “long-tested communist fighter.”
Jiang’s death comes after the party faced its most widespread public show of opposition in decades when crowds called for leader Xi Jinping to resign during weekend protests against anti-virus controls that are confining millions of people to their homes.
A surprise choice to lead a divided Communist Party after the 1989 turmoil, Jiang saw China through history-making changes including a revival of market-oriented reforms, the return of Hong Kong from British rule in 1997 and Beijing’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001.
Even as China opened to the outside, Jiang’s government stamped out dissent. It jailed human rights, labor and pro-democracy activists and banned the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which the ruling party saw as a threat to its monopoly on power.
Jiang gave up his last official title in 2004 but remained a force behind the scenes in wrangling that led to the rise of Xi, who took power in 2012. Xi has tightened political control, crushed China’s little remaining dissent and reasserted the dominance of state industry.
Jiang was responsible for China “getting onto a global platform and rehabilitating itself after 1989,” said Kerry Brown, a Chinese politics expert at King’s College London. “He will be remembered as someone who made probably a pretty positive contribution.”
Rumors that Jiang might be in poor health spread after he missed a ruling party congress in October at which Xi, China’s most powerful figure since at least the 1980s, broke with tradition and awarded himself a third five-year term as leader.
Jiang was on the verge of retirement as the party secretary for Shanghai in 1989 when he was drafted by then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping to pull together the party and nation. He succeeded Zhao Ziyang, who was dismissed by Deng due to his sympathy for the student-led Tiananmen protesters.
In 13 years as party general secretary, China’s most powerful post, Jiang guided the country’s rise to economic power by welcoming capitalists into the party and pulling in foreign investment after China joined the WTO. China passed Germany and then Japan to become the second-largest economy after the United States.
Jiang captured a political prize when Beijing was picked as the site of the 2008 Summer Olympics after failing in an earlier bid.
Portly and owlish in oversize glasses, Jiang was an ebullient figure who played the piano and enjoyed singing, in contrast to his more reserved successors, Hu Jintao and Xi.
He spoke enthusiastic if halting English and would recite the Gettysburg Address for foreign visitors. On a visit to Britain, he tried to coax Queen Elizabeth II into singing karaoke.
A former soap factory manager, Jiang capped his career with the communist era’s first orderly succession, handing over his post as party leader in 2002 to Hu, who also took the ceremonial title of president the following year.
Still, he was said to be frustrated that Deng picked Hu, blocking Jiang from installing his own successor. Jiang tried to hold onto influence by staying on as chairman of the Central Military Commission, which controls the 2 million-member People’s Liberation Army. He gave up that post in 2004 following complaints he might divide the government.
After leaving office, Jiang had influence over promotions through his network of[...]
Voice of America
China Vows Crackdown on 'Hostile Forces' as Public Tests Xi
China's ruling Communist Party has vowed to "resolutely crack down on infiltration and sabotage activities by hostile forces," following the largest street demonstrations in decades staged by citizens fed up with strict anti-virus restrictions.
The statement from the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission released late Tuesday comes amid a massive show of force by security services to deter a recurrence of the protests that broke out over the weekend in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and several other cities.
While it did not directly address the protests, the statement serves as a reminder of the party's determination to enforce its rule.
Hundreds of SUVs, vans and armored vehicles with flashing lights were parked along city streets Wednesday while police and paramilitary forces conducted random ID checks and searched people's mobile phones for photos, banned apps or other potential evidence that they had taken part in the demonstrations.
The number of people who have been detained at the demonstrations and in follow-up police actions is not known.
The commission's statement, issued after an expanded session Monday presided over by its head Chen Wenqing, a member of the party's 24-member Politburo, said the meeting aimed to review the outcomes of October's 20th party congress.
At that event, Xi granted himself a third five-year term as secretary general, potentially making him China's leader for life, while stacking key bodies with loyalists and eliminating opposing voices.
"The meeting emphasized that political and legal organs must take effective measures to . resolutely safeguard national security and social stability," the statement said.
"We must resolutely crack down on infiltration and sabotage activities by hostile forces in accordance with the law, resolutely crack down on illegal and criminal acts that disrupt social order and effectively maintain overall social stability," it said.
Yet, less than a month after seemingly ensuring his political future and unrivaled dominance, Xi, who has signaled he favors regime stability above all, is facing his biggest public challenge yet.
He and the party have yet to directly address the unrest, which spread to college campuses and the semi-autonomous southern city of Hong Kong, as well as sparking sympathy protests abroad.
Most protesters focused their ire on the "zero-COVID" policy that has placed millions under lockdown and quarantine, limiting their access to food and medicine while ravaging the economy and severely restricting travel. Many mocked the government's ever-changing line of reasoning, as well as claims that "hostile outside foreign forces" were stirring the wave of anger.
Yet bolder voices called for greater freedom and democracy and for Xi, China's most powerful leader in decades, as well as the party he leads, to step down _ speech considered subversive and punishable with lengthy prison terms. Some held up blank pieces of white paper to demonstrate their lack of free speech rights.
The weekend protests were sparked by anger over the deaths of at least 10 people in a fire on Nov. 24 in China's far west that prompted angry questions online about whether firefighters or victims trying to escape were blocked by anti-virus controls.
Authorities eased some controls and announced a new push to vaccinate vulnerable groups after the demonstrations, but maintained they would stick to the "zero-COVID" strategy.
The party had already promised last month to reduce disruptions, but a spike in infections swiftly prompted party cadres under intense pressure to tighten controls in an effort to prevent outbreaks. The National Health Commission on Wednesday reported 37,612 cases detected over the previous 24 hours, while the death toll remained unchanged at 5,233.
Beijing's [...]
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