The Speaker Editors 
New Orleans City Council and Mayor Mitch Landrieu have continued their plan to remove monuments to Confederate history by removing a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis on Davis Street. The statue stood for 106 years.
The removal was conduced in the middle of the night, as Landrieu said removals would be done, early Thursday while police stood between dozens of people, some voicing opposition and protest, some support.
A piece of the world’s second-largest diamond, found 2 years ago by Vancouver’s Lucara Diamond company, just sold for $17.5m.
The big rock in question is the 1,109-carat “Lesedi La Rona.” They wanted $70m for it at the auction, but no one bid higher than $60m so they still have it.
The $17.5m diamond is a smaller piece that broke off of the “Lesedi.”
The reports are being denied by the White House, but The Washington Post broke the story today that in a meeting the president told the Russians highly classified security information about ISIS (something about airline safety and laptops).
Among the questions being raised is how this will effect the relationship with the unnamed U.S. partner (later reported by the New York Times to be Israel, although this was not confirmed) from which the U.S. received the information.
The Washington Posts sources for the story are “current and former U.S. officials.” They withheld most of the details of the information, but to quote their original piece:
“In his meeting with Lavrov, Trump seemed to be boasting about his inside knowledge of the looming threat. ‘I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day,’ the president said, according to an official with knowledge of the exchange.
“Trump went on to discuss aspects of the threat that the United States learned only through the espionage capabilities of a key partner. He did not reveal the specific intelligence-gathering method, but he described how the Islamic State was pursuing elements of a specific plot and how much harm such an attack could cause under varying circumstances. Most alarmingly, officials said, Trump revealed the city in the Islamic State’s territory where the U.S. intelligence partner detected the threat.”
The White House struck details of the meeting from the official transcripts for a “sort of memo summary” to be used in-house, and controlled dissemination of the transcripts for the wider public as well as immediately contacting the CIA and NSA.
The message delivered from the White House through Stuart Jones, acting assistant secretary for Near East affairs, was:
“The regime is responsible for killing as many as 50 detainees per day at Saydnaya. Credible sources have believed that many of the bodies have been disposed in mass graves. We now believe that the Syrian regime has installed a crematorium in the Saydnaya complex which could dispose of detainees remains with little evidence.”
The U.S. government last month accused Assad of using chemical weapons against his people before imposing sanctions on Syria. Assad denied that he did so, and called the story a “fabrication.”
Microsoft President Brad Smith complained that various governments “stockpile vulnerabilities.”
In other words, governments and agencies find weaknesses in technology and then keep that information to themselves in case they want to use it.
Smith said the current WannaCry malware event was a very rare one, combining a piece of very sophisticated software (to do the exploit) with a simpler piece (to do the ransom), conducted by a criminal organization.
To accusations Microsoft didn’t do enough to alert people about the danger, Smith said, “Microsoft has the first responsibility.” He called it a “wake-up call for us,” and that “we should all learn from this.”
In response to questions about whether the NSA told Microsoft they had a tool that exploited the vulnerability, Smith said, “I don’t want to go into the specifics about how we learned this particular problem, or by whom or when. It is a public record that we provided a patch in March. There wasn’t a public statement until April.
“But what I think is also important: We need the global community to come together.”
Everywhere humans and elephants coexist, they come into conflict, resulting in injuries, deaths, and ruined crops.
While governments compensate farmers and others for injuries and ruined crops, people in countries like Tanzania and Kenya have said they believe the government’s real priority is the elephants, which bring in tourist dollars.
A few years ago by accident, a drone pilot in Tanzania discovered that elephants he was filming were afraid of his drone. Because conservationists had been looking for a way to deal with elephants getting too close to humans and farms, they seized on the opportunity and added drones to their bag of tricks, which already included making loud noises, movement, firing guns into the air, charging elephants with vehicles, and hanging spicy chili-soaked sheets.
Farmers and the groups that help them are still looking for a better, long-term solution to the elephant problem.
The President said he was willing to meet the North Korean leader if the right circumstances presented themselves.
“If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honored to do it,” Mr Trump said in an interview with Bloomberg News.
In the interview, Trump also said that while “most political people would never say” they’d be willing to meet with Kim. “I’m telling you, under the right circumstances, I would meet with him. We have breaking news.”
The new bill has been approved, and it includes an extra $20 billion for defense. Immigration and border patrol get an 8% increase, but there is nothing for a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
The defense amount includes a 2.1% pay raise for military personnel.
There was also nothing in the bill about hot topics planned parenthood and sanctuary cities. Both keep their current funding for now.
The Republicans traded a lot of the things they wanted in order to get funding for defense and border security.
The National Endowment for the Arts, about which there was some buzz that the program would see cuts, got a slight increase.
The UN will get $640 million less from the U.S. this year, and funding for the Coast Guard was also reduced.
The President’s new TV and online campaign touts the accomplishments of his first 100 days in office, including tax cuts, approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, and the appointment of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.
Have you ever wondered about fake art and the authenticators who can tell the difference between real and fake?
In this article, world-renowned art authenticator Dr Kilian Anheuser of Geneva’s Fine Arts Expert Institute (FAEI) explains the problem of art fakes in the $60bn yearly art market, what types of paintings are more often forged or faked, the fate of paintings that cannot be authenticated, the ongoing duel between art faker and art authenticator, and the means and methods by which authenticators discover whether a painting is real or not.
Some of this information may surprise you–the questions are not as simple as they might at first seem.
Fakes are certainly a major problem for the art market today, but the real issues cannot be reduced to a simple question like “Is it a fake or not?”
Most paintings have undergone considerable changes during successive cleaning and conservation campaigns which are perfectly normal even for late 19th/early 20th century “modern” art, now already more than a hundred years old.
Any earlier paintings, such as the old masters with extremely high market values, you will never ever find in their original state. Some of these, discovered in very poor condition, would effectively be re-painted by a skilled conservator on their original support, with just traces of the original paint layer remaining.
Should this be called a fake or an example of outstanding restoration?
Anyway, we feel a potential buyer ought to know what exactly he will get for his money.
With the old masters there is also the issue of historic copies–often of high quality and by skilled period artists–or multiple workshop copies. Pre-modern workshops were enterprises with apprentices and employees, not studios where an inspired artist worked on his own. Art historians know about these issues, many investors in art do not.
There are of course outright fakes.
We get to see many of them, and we are certainly more aware of the situation than many others. Money always attracts shady characters, and there is plenty of money in the art market. It is difficult to set a starting point. Ten years ago or twenty, whatever, but the trend is clear and will continue for as long as there is money to be made. At present, only a small minority of collectors, art dealers and investors protect themselves through a proper scientific expertise before a purchase. All too often in the past, and often enough still at present, a painting on which doubts have been cast will simply be sold on to someone unaware or willing to take a gamble. Otherwise, if the authenticity of a work of art is never questioned because for all parties concerned it is convenient not to know, the painting will retain its market value, be it fake or genuine. Such are the economics of the art market.
Money is the incentive for most art forgeries.
Other motivations such as personal revenge are relatively rare. This means that for a forger or an unscrupulous restorer the ratio between effort and prospective gain must remain interesting. Old masters with their sophisticated painting techniques and historic materials difficult to obtain are relatively rarely outright fakes. In this sector you’d rather find concealed restorations to “improve” the looks of a painting, or to get a prestigious attribution accepted.
Modern art is more likely to be faked outright.
Yes, forgers do know about scientific techniques and historic working practices. Never underestimate your opponents. Most (exept for those who simply cannot be bothered as someone is always likely to buy their painting eyes shut because they cannot resist a tempting bargain) do try to avoid beginner’s mistakes as far as pigments are concerned, and they would also focus for example on lesser known artists who still sell for good money but where a potential buyer is less likely to demand a sound scientific expertise than for a premium painting.
A serious scientific authentification laboratory does not simply carry out isolated tests.
What we and also our colleagues in museum laboratories and elsewhere do is to look for inconsistencies between materials, techniques and known workshop practices. Even if physico-chemical analysis brings up no anachronistic elements as such, meaning that in principle all the materials and techniques were available and in use at the time in question, the painting techniques and materals may still not match what is known about a painter’s working habits, known from historic sources or other technological studies. To make the most of the analytical results, these cannot therefore be interpreted in isolation but must always be discussed in their historic and art historical context.
Herein lies the difference between a typical university scientist competent in the use of his analytical methods who may come up with a correct analytical result but will be unable to tell you more, and a specialized paintings authentication laboratory who will know the crucial questions to be asked, and who will be able to interpret the results to work out the answers.
These laboratories bring together different competences such as conservation scientists, technical art historians and conservators, each of whom is able to contribute complementing observations from their own specialty background. At FAEI, for example, we are a scientific team of two chemists-cum-art historians, each with some 20 years experience in the scientific analysis of works of art, an imaging specialist and a qualified paintings conservator. Similar competences can be found in museum laboratories (most countries have at least one major museum equipped with a scientific laboratory, in the UK for paintings this would be for example the National Gallery in London, in the US there are several such as the Chicago Institute of Art, the National Gallery in Washington DC, or the Getty Conservation Institute in L.A.). However, these would not normally take on work for private clients, which is where laboratories like ours come in, providing services to collectors, art dealers, investors, and also to public institutions.
Guest article by Dr Kilian Anheuser
Photos: Dr Kilian Anheuser
The President’s 100 Days advertising campaign was denied by CNN when his team tried to buy space for their new 30-second video ad, which has a shot of 5 news personalities, including one from CNN, with “FAKE NEWS” printed over them.
The anchors include CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell and Rachel Maddow, ABC’s George Stephanopolous and CBS’ Scott Pelley. The video is published on Trump’s YouTube channel and elsewhere.
The “FAKE NEWS” part of the video is just a second or so out of 30, which highlight Trump’s accomplishments in his first 100 days.The message is that while he did these laudable things, “You wouldn’t know it from watching the news.”
A 25% improvement in the black death rate since 1999 was reported by the CDC this week.
They analyzed for age-specific trends among 4 age groups: 18 to 34, 35 to 49, 50 to 64 and 65 and older.
Whites, who live 4 years longer than blacks on average, have seen worse death rates since 1999, as was reported in headline news earlier this year. The trend in white deaths is referred to as “deaths of despair” and are often related to drugs, alcohol and suicide, and they are widespread — crossing the county and all its socioeconomic brackets, but are particularly prevalent in low-education whites (high school or less).
Globally, mortality rates are getting better for almost everyone. In the U.S., minorities are seeing longer lives, but in other developed countries, which are often compared with America, white lives are increasing.