WASHINGTON — Michelle Obama had one message for Americans at Monday night’s Democratic National Convention: “If you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me, they can; and they will if we don’t make a change in this election.” It was a dire warning, but it captured the essence of a speech marked by a sense of urgency and bleak realism.
The former first lady painted a picture of what she said young people, including her two daughters, see around them in America today.
“They see people shouting in grocery stores, unwilling to wear a mask to keep us all safe,” Obama said in the prerecorded speech. “They see an entitlement that says only certain people belong here, that greed is good, and winning is everything because as long as you come out on top, it doesn’t matter what happens to everyone else.”
“Sadly, this is the America that is on display for the next generation,” she said. “That’s not just disappointing; it’s downright infuriating.”
Obama has long been admired on both sides of the aisle for her ability to deliver inspiring and motivating speeches. To this day, she remains one of the most sought-after campaign surrogates in all of politics.
But if viewers tuned into the Democratic convention Monday expecting to see the same warm, welcoming, “mom-in-chief” version of Michelle Obama they had grown accustomed to during her eight years in the White House, they were in for a wake-up call.
Obama herself seemed to acknowledge this, describing how she reframes one of her best-known phrases, “when they go low, we go high,” when people ask her today how to “go high” in the face of a president like Donald Trump.
“Going high does not mean putting on a smile and saying nice things when confronted by viciousness and cruelty. Going high means taking the harder path. It means scraping and clawing our way to that mountain top,” Obama said.
“Going high means standing fierce against hatred. … And going high means unlocking the shackles of lies and mistrust with the only thing that can truly set us free: the cold hard truth.”
Trump responded to Obama’s speech on Twitter Tuesday morning.
“Somebody please explain to @MichelleObama that Donald J. Trump would not be here, in the beautiful White House, if it weren’t for the job done by your husband, Barack Obama,” the president wrote.
The purpose of this week’s convention is to nominate, and ostensibly celebrate, the party’s presidential ticket of former Vice President Joe Biden and California Sen. Kamala Harris. But Obama didn’t even mention Biden until halfway into her speech.
Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden and vice presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris are seen at the stage during a campaign event, their first joint appearance since Biden named Harris as his running mate, at Alexis Dupont High School in Wilmington, Delaware, August 12, 2020. Carlos Barria | Reuters
After praising Biden for his empathy and fortitude, she said: “Now, Joe is not perfect. And he’d be the first to tell you that. But there is no perfect candidate, no perfect president.”
Obama didn’t mention Harris, who is the first Black woman ever nominated to a major party ticket. Obama’s speech was reportedly taped before Biden announced Harris as his running mate on Tuesday.
Obama also warned that voter suppression tactics are already underway. “Right now, folks who know they cannot win fair and square at the ballot box are doing everything they can to stop us from voting. They’re closing down polling places in minority neighborhoods. They’re purging voter rolls. They’re sending people out to intimidate voters, and they’re lying about the security of our ballots,” she said.
Her warning echoed remarks her husband, former President Barack Obama, had made about voter suppression during his recent eulogy for the late civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis of Georgia.
“If we want to keep the possibility of progress alive in our time, if we want to be able to look our children in the eye after this election, we have got to reassert our place in American history,” the former first lady said in the last lines of her speech. “And we have got to do everything we can to elect my friend, Joe Biden, as the next president of the United States.”
Her husband is scheduled to deliver the convention keynote on Wednesday.
During a very early episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, cast member Taylor throws a birthday party for her four-year-old daughter. There are grass sculptures, flower arrangements, a band, a bodyguard and a diamond ring for the birthday girl. The haul comes to around $50,000 (£38,152), revealed in text that flashes up at the bottom of the screen with a neat “kerching” sound.
I’m pretty sure my fourth birthday party involved a Tesco caterpillar cake and some felt tip pens. But I didn’t watch that Real Housewives scene with jealousy, or even contempt. My reaction was more complicated than that: a mixture of low-level aspiration, deep fascination, fantasy and mild disgust.
The Real Housewives franchise wasn’t the first to feature an outrageous amount of wealth as a primary character – there were plenty of shows before it, especially in the 2000s. Shows with lip-glossed girls and glistening 4x4s and million dollar weddings. MTV Cribs. Keeping Up with the Kardashians. The Simple Life. The Hills. Rich Kids of Beverly Hills. But this trend didn’t end when Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie faded from public view; we’ve had Below Deck and Made in Chelsea since, and, of course, the mother of them all: Selling Sunset. Our fascination with the mega rich persists.
Selling Sunset – the new season of which is out this month – is particularly unrestrained when it comes to money. The show follows a group of bronzed women in heels who sell luxury houses in the Hollywood Hills. The property prices, which are always in the millions, swish across the screen as the camera pans across jacuzzis and tennis courts and complicated fireplaces. Their interpersonal dramas, of which there are many, exist against a backdrop of high-end cocktail parties and chef-made salads. But why do we continue to return to this kind of wealth-smothered entertainment?
“I can’t explain it, but I think it’s because it’s a life I will never have. They’re like aliens to me,” 23-year-old Dani says of her fascination with Selling Sunset. “I grew up in a typical working class northern household where I’d fantasise about being rich when I was older and having a house with a big TV and a swimming pool. My aspirations have changed as time’s gone on, and I’ve realised money isn’t everything, but there’s still probably a part of me that longs for that stuff. It’s nice to imagine living in these mansions, what that life could feel like.”
I know what Dani means. When I was a kid, families with SMEG fridges and granola in jars were the height of luxury. I’d fantasise about suddenly coming into money, being ejected from the basement flat in Archway that I shared with my mum and into a proper house with a deep ceramic bath and new fluffy towels where we could watch SKY on a flatscreen. This fantasy has dulled and evolved somewhat (I just want to pay off my overdraft), but that doesn’t mean I don’t still dream about one day owning, idk, a Jaguar and two extremely perky tits.
Helen Wood, a professor of Media and Cultural Studies who focuses on reality TV and class, says this type of “aspirational” TV really ramped up in the late 2000s. “Real Housewives started around 2008, which is the same time as the economic downturn,” she says. “There was this moment where we were seeing the uber rich with no bars to what they could do, while the rest of the world was moving into austerity or even experiencing homelessness. You’d think that’s when we wouldn’t want to see it, but actually that’s the moment it became much more interesting to us.”
Wood puts our fascination down to a mixture of fantasy and escapism. “I guess the Kardashians is more about celebrity and aspiration and the idea that anyone could have access to this lifestyle,” she says. “Reality TV still tries to circulate that idea, that this is broadly attainable.”
But our obsession with watching the mega wealthy on TV also arguably isn’t as simple as wanting their expensive handbags and matte faces. You also become invested in the cast’s emotional lives. Taylor might have been spending $50,000 on her daughter’s birthday party, for instance, but she was also surviving an emotionally and physically abusive marriage. Money can buy you material comfort and temporary relief, but beneath the immaculate manicures and sparkling chandeliers are human feelings and human problems, some of which might mirror your own.
“You do sort of forget that these people are so rich after a while,” agrees 25-year-old Aimee, who watches Real Housewives and Selling Sunset religiously. “You might be like, ‘That is ridiculous,’ when one of them takes their private jet to Vegas, but once you’re a few episodes in, you have your favourite and least favourite characters, and you take sides in arguments and care how their lives pan out. I also think it shows how money comes with its own problems. They get trapped in certain lifestyles and loveless marriages, and being that rich can seem quite claustrophobic.”
But alongside simultaneously aspiring and relating to the mega wealthy on TV, there’s often also a heavy dose of judgment too. ‘If I were a millionairess, I would never buy that tacky coffee table with the elephant legs,’ you think to yourself smugly, while clicking “Skip Recap” for the seventh time that day. “Look at them, with their walk-in closets just for shoes. Could never be me,” you say out loud to no one, while scrolling through GoFundMes.
Wood calls this type of “judgy” enjoyment a “tournament of values”.
“People compare their own values to other people’s,” she explains. “That’s mostly what they’re engaged with; trying to prove their own worth in comparison to people on TV.” In other words: it makes us feel better about ourselves to hate-watch people we view as morally inferior, even subconsciously. “We’re quite judgmental,” Wood adds.
Basically, we love watching wealthy people for the same reason we doom-scroll through Instagram. We’re fascinated with other people’s lives. But mainly, really, we’re fascinated with what other people’s lives say about our own. We’re not obsessed with watching mega rich people. We’re obsessed with what mega rich people reveal about us.
Vanity Fair / Dan Adler, Anthony Breznican, Kenzie Bryant, Michael Calderone, Arimeta Diop, Caleb Ecarma, Joe Hagan, Claire Landsbaum, Chris Smith, Abigail Tracy, and Erin Vanderhoof
In late May, as video of George Floyd’s murder spread across the nation, Americans rallied to the streets in what would become the largest protest movement in decades. The story of those early days is told here by those who rose up, those who bore witness, those who grieved, and those who hope.
Wealthy millennials have to pay up to $2,000 to be featured on RKOI. Peter Powell/Reuters
Infamous Instagram account “Rich Kids of Instagram” (RKOI, since renamed “Rich Kids of the Internet”) had humble beginnings.
In a recent profile for The Times, Jessie Hewitson wrote that James Ison, age 27, started the account in 2012 after posting a single picture that quickly went viral: Zachary Dell, son of billionaire Michael Dell, feasting on a buffet in a private jet.
Ison was an econ university student enamored by the wealthy world, Hewitson wrote, a sharp contrast from his modest childhood upbringing. Soon after he began reposting pictures of the children of millionaires and billionaires, two New Yorkers (who remain anonymous) who were separately doing the same reached out to Ison. The resulting collaboration was the beginning of RKOI, according to Hewitson, where you now have to pay up to $2,000 to be featured.
RKOI currently boasts over 372,000 followers and an endless stream of wealthy young millennials pictured living their lives to the fullest, from driving Bugattis in Switzerland and taking yacht trips to Montenegro to attending the Royal Ascot and splurging on $50,000 watches. Their summers are especially lavish.
It’s become so popular that spin-off accounts began cropping up, such as Rich Kids of Turkey and Rich Russian Kids. Many started as satires, wrote Tom Sykes for The Daily Beast, but nevertheless became a place for the youth to flash their riches.
Despite the wealth that RKOI has brought Ison, Hewitson described him as down-to-earth, someone who forgoes flashy cars and refuses to post tasteless pictures of people surrounded with stacks of cash.
Ison has since befriended some of the rich kids, building trust to help him launch his next venture: RKOI Concierge, which Ison told Hewitson is an “Ask Jeeves for the 0.1%.”
As millions of people around the world become intimately familiar with their home decor, the Swedish furniture giant IKEA is offering an online resource to fuel your redecoration reveries: In honor of the the 70th anniversary of the company’s first catalog, IKEA just dropped digital versions of every catalog on its museum website. If your idea of a good time is wandering the labyrinth of your local IKEA showroom, trying out sectionals in a pretend living room, this digital trove of modular furniture makes an excellent and Covid-safe alternative distraction — and a fascinating time capsule of Scandinavian design trends.
As of 2019, IKEA boasts 433 stores across 53 countries, inundating markets around the globe with its distinctive brand of affordable build-it-yourself products. The company has been around since 1943, when founder Ingvar Kamprad launched it as a mail-order business selling matches, postcards and pencils in the Smaland region of Sweden. But the first proper IKEA catalog didn’t come out until 1951, says IKEA Museum archive and collections manager Per-Olof Svensson. On its cover: the iconic MK wing chair. It was discontinued a few years later, but made a retro comeback in the 2013 and 2014 catalogs as STRANDMON.
Wing chairs over the world: At top, the 1951 catalog, featuring the MK chair. The same chair re-emerged to grace the 2013 and 2014 catalogs. Inter IKEA Systems B.V.
The business took off, and fast: Customers could phone or mail in their orders by returning a coupon included in the catalog. Starting in 1958, they could drop by the first IKEA store, in Almhult, Sweden, and go home with the item of their choice. The “supermarket for furniture” concept is part of what made IKEA such a success. But the do-it-yourself assembly wasn’t the original idea. “At first, it was already assembled products,” Svensson says. “But quite early we tried to experiment by taking off the legs from the tables.” The birth of flat packaging can be traced back to an employee who started unmounting the legs of a LOVET table to safely load the piece into a customer’s trunk.
A page from the 1962 catalog shows the LOVET table (bottom, middle picture), which made its first appearance in 1956. Inter IKEA Systems B.V.
The early catalogs are comparatively utilitarian affairs; things don’t get really interesting until the late 1960s and ’70s, when colorful plastics and zany fabrics emerge and photos began displaying the furniture in sample living arrangements that still look inviting today. Check out this space-age living room from 1973.
Couches and chairs of the Impala collection, 1973 catalog. Inter IKEA Systems B.V.
The catalog’s illustrations also serve as a timeline of household technology. The first television shows up on page 88 in 1958, and soon the new devices proliferate and begin to dominate the home; the size of entertainment centers gradually increases, and the orientation of living room couches and armchairs progressively shifts, from facing one another to pointing toward the TV screen.
In 1958, the TV appears, and so does the TV stand. Inter IKEA Systems B.V.
The company opened its first store outside of Scandinavia in 1973, in Spreitenbach, Switzerland. International expansion was a turning point in the company’s branding: Its Swedish roots turned into the foundations of its brand identity, making IKEA an instrument of Swedish soft power. Going global meant “Swedifying” the brand, writes design historian Sara Kristoffersson in her cultural history of the company, Design By IKEA. The company’s iconography and design sensibility ultimately became synonymous with Sweden itself. She recounts a story of a Spanish soccer fan asking, “Why is the Swedish team sponsored by IKEA?” at the Euro 2012 championship: “The Swedish team’s blue and yellow kit clearly triggered associations with IKEA, rather than with the Swedish flag.”
The cover of the 1973 Swedish catalog features the TAJT chair, a foldable futon covered in denim fabric. Apart from being a year of international expansion, ’73 was a big year for denim.
Svensson noted that IKEA was the first furniture brand to start exploring the use of denim in furnishing. Inter IKEA Systems B.V.
In 1979, the iconic BILLY bookcase makes its first appearance. It’s probably the most popular item IKEA ever put out — the company claims that about one unit is sold every five seconds — and has become the base for a never-ending list of IKEA hacks. Need wall dividers for your home office? A dollhouse? A DIY Murphy bed? BILLY’s got you covered, if you’re crafty enough to figure it out.
The now-inescapable BILLY bookshelf makes its debut in the background of the 1979 catalog. Inter IKEA Systems B.V.
IKEA made it to the U.S. in 1985, drawing 150,000 customers to its first store in suburban Philadelphia during opening week, some from as far away as Massachusetts, the New York Times reported. Critics wondered whether Americans would go for smaller European-sized beds, but yuppies couldn’t get enough of the company’s modernist wares, and IKEA’s march across the American landscape began.
Success, however, came at a cost: The company is said to consume 1% of the world’s lumber. To reduce its wood consumption, IKEA dropped its popular shelving system, EXPEDIT, and replaced it with the thinner-walled KALLAX, which first appeared in a catalog in 2015. It looked pretty much the same, but EXPETIT aficionados were still outraged.
Left: The death of EXPEDIT in 2014 was followed closely by the birth of KALLAX in 2015. Inter IKEA Systems B.V.
One thing hasn’t changed: Buyers still bemoan the durability of laminated particle-board furniture. (Ask anyone who has attempted to move a BILLY from one apartment to another without having it disintegrate en route.) But IKEA archivist Svensson, a proud second-generation IKEA staffer, notes that some of the company’s products can live on and on.
Take, for example, all the assorted pots, pans, and IKEA kitchen gear he received as a gift from his parents when he left home in the mid-1980s. “When I moved away from my parents, we had a range called the STARTBOX, where you could get all the things you needed in the kitchen,” he says. “My dad was heavily involved in bringing this to life.”
The now-discontinued STARTBOX — a box of kitchen essentials for young adults — premiered in 1986. Inter IKEA Systems B.V.
Decades later, plenty of his old STARTBOX kitchenware, Svensson says, is still going strong. “So that is close to my heart.”
New York (CNN Business) – BlackBerry has been left for dead countless times over the past decade, but it refuses to go away. Two years after the last (we thought) BlackBerry phone, the BlackBerry logo will appear once again on a smartphone, complete with its famous, honest-to-goodness, physical QWERTY keyboard.
New BlackBerry smartphone with a physical keyboard and 5G is coming in 2021
It’s not a “true” BlackBerry phone, per se, because BlackBerry (BB) has been out of the phone business since 2016. But the company has continued to license its brand to phone manufacturers over the years, and it answered the call from a new licensee this year — OnwardMobility, an Austin, Texas, company.
We don’t know much about the OnwardMobility version of the BlackBerry phone, other than it will run Android, it’ll have 5G connectivity, and the company claims it will debut sometime in the first half of 2021. Also, Foxconn (HNHPF) subsidiary FIH will manufacture the new BlackBerry.
BlackBerry phones were notorious for two things: A physical keyboard and top-of-the-line security. Although modern smartphones — Apple’s iOS in particular — have become remarkably more secure over the past decade, OnwardMobility is betting the barrage of remote employees working on their mobile phones has given IT departments across the country a collective heart attack.
A phone synonymous with security could be in high-demand (although iPhones and many shades of Android devices are ubiquitous in corporate environments nowadays). A physical keyboard couldn’t hurt — typing long emails on a BlackBerry is just plain easier than typing on glass.
“Enterprise professionals are eager for secure 5G devices that enable productivity, without sacrificing the user experience,” said Peter Franklin, CEO of OnwardMobility, in a statement. “BlackBerry smartphones are known for protecting communications, privacy, and data.”
No one expects the new BlackBerry phone to go gangbusters. It has long since been relegated to niche status after the iPhone and then Android ate its lunch.
But BlackBerry used to be the king of smartphones. At its peak in 2012, it had more than 80 million active users, and they were a status symbol — giving off a kind of “I’m busy and I’m letting you know it” vibe.
The company got its start in 1996 as Research In Motion, and it called its devices two-way pagers. Its first gadget, the “Inter@ctive Pager,” allowed customers to respond to pages with a physical keyboard — a kind of text messaging/email hybrid. Three years later, RIM introduced the BlackBerry name with the BlackBerry 850.
Eventually, BlackBerry phones gained support for true email, apps, web browsing and BBM — an encrypted text messaging platform that predated WhatsApp and survived long after BlackBerry was surpassed by its rivals.
But Apple’s (AAPL) touchscreen revolution with the iPhone in 2007 made BlackBerry’s offerings appear lacking. It tried touch screens, but the first versions weren’t very good. BlackBerry tried slide-out keyboard models, but those never took off. And it developed a few phones with no physical keyboard — but those were missing BlackBerry’s key differentiator.
BlackBerry eventually gave up on its own software, embracing Android and layering its security software on top. But it found success in enterprise security software and automotive software and ditched phone-making altogether a few years ago.
For the nostalgic folks out there — and people who just love typing on a physical keyboard — they’ve been able to get BlackBerry phones over the past few years made by TCL. Its license it expiring, though, and OnwardMobility is carrying the torch.
The New York Times / Tiffany Hsu
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/business/media/college-football-ads-coronavirus.html
Fox and Disney, which owns ESPN and ABC, prepare to take another hit from a pandemic that has already affected them with shutdowns and delays.
College football brought television networks nearly $1.7 billion in advertising last season, according to the research firm Kantar. Doug Mcschooler/Associated Press
The postponement of much of the college football season could disrupt the flow of more than $1 billion from advertisers to the television networks that count on a slate of game broadcasts every fall.
The return of the college game — a reliable ratings draw — might have helped the TV industry salvage a year of declining revenues resulting from pandemic-related cancellations and production delays. Now that the Big Ten and the Pacific-12 conferences, two of college football’s five powerhouse leagues, have pushed back their seasons amid concerns about the coronavirus, media companies are preparing for more pain.
Many players and school administrators, and even President Trump, had lobbied against the postponement, which could have financial ramifications for teams, campuses and local communities. The punting of the season will also affect the networks that have spent billions to secure broadcast rights, as well as the companies that had planned to spend millions to advertise their products.
“The implications are huge economically,” said Kevin Krim, the chief executive of EDO, a TV ad measurement platform that works with the networks and advertisers. “The cable and broadcast television ecosystem, with advertisers and rights fees and subscriber fees, are heavily anchored to live sports, and the most valuable franchises there are football.”
Last season, college football brought in nearly $1.7 billion in spending on television advertising, according to the research firm Kantar. Companies like Allstate, Chick-fil-A and State Farm each spent more than $30 million to advertise during games, while AT&T spent more than $70 million, Kantar found.
The Walt Disney Company and Fox are among the conglomerates likely to take a hit. More than 27.3 million people watched Louisiana State triumph over Clemson to win the national championship on Jan. 13, a game broadcast by the Disney-owned ESPN. It drew an estimated $91 million in advertising, according to EDO.
For Fox last year, college football was responsible for nearly 6 percent of ad spending and nearly 10 percent of all TV ad impressions, or viewer exposure to ads, according to the ad measurement company iSpot.TV. ESPN drew 9.5 percent of its impressions from the sport. ABC, also owned by Disney, racked up 7.5 percent of its impressions thanks to college football.
ESPN and Fox declined to comment.
The pandemic has left live sports programming “in constant flux, almost on a daily basis,” said Jeremy Carey, the managing director of the sports marketing agency Optimum Sports, and companies and their ad agencies are working to adapt their marketing plans. At risk: more than 300 regular-season national college football broadcasts that would require more than 50 days to watch, Mr. Carey said.
“There’s still a lot of dust in the air, and there may be more left to settle,” he said. “It’s really challenging when you don’t have all the puzzle pieces to paint an exact picture.”
“There’s going to be a domino effect here, because if Advertiser X can’t get their dollars into college football, and if they have a specific time frame for messaging, they’re going to have to find those audiences elsewhere,” Mr. Carey said.
Visa, which advertises on pro football broadcasts but not during college games, is monitoring the situation closely, “as it could be an indicator of how the N.F.L. season progresses,” said Mary Ann Reilly, who heads the company’s marketing in North America.
The company is developing contingency plans if pro football is canceled, delayed or cut short, readying itself for the possibility that it will need to shift its spending to other areas, such as digital platforms, Ms. Reilly said.
Advertisers have already been trying to work around delays resulting from pandemic-related shutdowns of TV shows and the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics this summer, said Rich Greenfield, an analyst with LightShed Partners, a media research firm.
“The problems keep piling up,” he said. “The catastrophe for the media industry at large is that not only are college sports in jeopardy, but also there’s really very limited original entertainment programming. So the TV ecosystem is going to be really starved for content to put ads next to.”
The Big 12 college conference said on Wednesday that it planned to hold games starting on Sept. 26. And Fox still plans to air major-league baseball games and pro wrestling in the fall, in addition to National Football League games.
But Mr. Krim, of EDO, said he was worried that shifting sports schedules would lead to an on-air collision of football and basketball games, either this fall in the pros or next spring for colleges, resulting in “a smashed-up overcrowding that we’ve never seen before.”
Without a certain timeline for college football, the fate of the most lucrative games of the season is unclear.
“Hundreds of millions of dollars of value could just evaporate,” Mr. Krim said.
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanese security officials warned the prime minister and president last month that 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored in Beirut’s port posed a security risk and could destroy the capital if it exploded, according to documents seen by Reuters and senior security sources.
Debris are seen in the port area after a blast in Beirut, Lebanon, August 10, 2020. REUTERS/Hannah McKay TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Just over two weeks later, the industrial chemicals exploded in a massive blast that obliterated most of the port, killed at least 163 people, injured 6,000 more and destroyed some 6,000 buildings, according to municipal authorities.
A report by the General Directorate of State Security about events leading up to the explosion included a reference to a private letter sent to President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister Hassan Diab on July 20.
While the content of the letter was not in the report seen by Reuters, a senior security official said it summed up the findings of a judicial investigation launched in January which concluded the chemicals needed to be secured immediately.
The state security report, which confirmed the correspondence to the president and the prime minister, has not previously been reported.
“There was a danger that this material, if stolen, could be used in a terrorist attack,” the official told Reuters.
“At the end of the investigation, Prosecutor General (Ghassan) Oweidat prepared a final report which was sent to the authorities,” he said, referring to the letter sent to the prime minister and president by the General Directorate of State Security, which oversees port security.
“I warned them that this could destroy Beirut if it exploded,” said the official, who was involved in writing the letter and declined to be named.
Reuters could not independently confirm his description of the letter.
The prime minister’s office and the presidency did not respond to requests for comment about the July 20 letter.
The prosecutor general did not respond to requests for comment.
‘DO WHAT IS NECESSARY’
The correspondence could fuel further criticism and public fury that the blast is just the latest, if not most dramatic, example of the government negligence and corruption that has already pushed Lebanon to economic collapse.
As protests over the blast raged in Lebanon on Monday, Diab’s government resigned, though it will remain as a caretaker administration until a new cabinet is formed.
The rebuilding of Beirut alone is expected to cost up to $15 billion, in a country already effectively bankrupt with total banking system losses exceeding $100 billion.
Aoun confirmed last week that he had been informed about the material. He told reporters he had directed the secretary general of the supreme defence council, an umbrella group of Lebanon’s security and military agencies chaired by the president, to “do what is necessary”.
“(The state security service) said it is dangerous. I am not responsible! I don’t know where it was put and I didn’t know how dangerous it was. I have no authority to deal with the port directly. There is a hierarchy and all those who knew should have known their duties to do the necessary,” Aoun said.
Many questions remain over why the shipment of ammonium nitrate docked in Beirut in late 2013. Even more baffling is why such a huge stash of dangerous material, used in bombs and fertilisers, was allowed to remain there for so long.
The letter sent to Lebanon’s president and prime minister followed a string of memos and letters sent to the country’s courts over the previous six years by port, custom and security officials, repeatedly urging judges to order the removal of the ammonium nitrate from its position so close to the city centre.
The General Directorate of State Security’s report seen by Reuters said many requests had been submitted, without giving an exact number. It said the port’s manifest department sent several written requests to the customs directorate up until 2016 asking them to call on a judge to order the material be re-exported immediately.
“But until now, no decision has been issued over this matter. After consulting one of our chemical specialists, the expert confirmed that this material is dangerous and is used to produce explosives,” the General Directorate of State Security report said.
HAZARDOUS MATERIAL
The road to last week’s tragedy began seven years ago, when the Rhosus, a Russian-chartered, Moldovan-flagged vessel carrying ammonium nitrate from Georgia to Mozambique, docked in Beirut to try to take on extra cargo to raise the fees for passage through the Suez Canal, according to the ship’s captain.
Port authorities impounded the Rhosus on December 2013 by judicial order 2013/1031 due to outstanding debts owed to two companies that filed claims in Beirut courts, the state security report showed.
In May 2014, the ship was deemed unseaworthy and its cargo was unloaded in October 2014 and warehoused in what was known as Hangar 12. The ship sank near the port’s breakwater on Feb. 18, 2018, the security report showed.
Moldova lists the owner of the ship as Panama-based Briarwood Corp. Briarwood could not immediately be reached for comment.
In February 2015, Nadim Zwain, a judge from the Summary Affairs Court, which deals with urgent issues, appointed an expert to inspect the cargo, according to the security report.
The report said the expert concluded that the material was hazardous and, through the port authorities, requested it be transferred to the army. Reuters could not independently confirm the expert’s account.
Lebanese army command rejected the request and recommended the chemicals be transferred or sold to the privately-owned Lebanese Explosives Company, the state security report said.
The report did not say why the army had refused to accept the cargo. A security official told Reuters it was because they didn’t need it. The army declined to comment.
The explosive company’s management told Reuters it had not been interested in purchasing confiscated material and that the firm had its own suppliers and government import licences.
From then on, customs and security officials wrote to judges roughly every six months asking for the removal of the material, according to the requests seen by Reuters.
Judges and customs officials contacted by Reuters declined to comment.
A number of customs and port officials have since been detained as part of the investigation into the blast.
A still image taken from a drone footage shows the damage two days after an explosion in Beirut’s port area, Lebanon August 6, 2020. Reuters TV/via REUTERS
‘BAD STORAGE AND BAD JUDGMENT’
In January 2020, a judge launched an official investigation after it was discovered that Hangar 12 was unguarded, had a hole in its southern wall and one of its doors dislodged, meaning the hazardous material was at risk of being stolen.
In his final report following the investigation, Prosecutor General Oweidat “gave orders immediately” to ensure hangar doors and holes were repaired and security provided, a second high-ranking security official who also requested anonymity said.
On June 4, based on those orders, state security instructed port authorities to provide guards at Hangar 12, appoint a director for the warehouse and secure all the doors and repair the hole in the southern wall, according to the state security report and security officials.
The port authorities did not immediately respond to requests for comment
“The maintenance started and (port authorities) sent a team of Syrian workers (but) there was no one supervising them when they entered to fix the holes,” the security official said.
During the work, sparks from the welding took hold and fire started to spread, the official said.
“Given that there were fireworks stored in the same hangar, after an hour a big fire was set off by the fireworks and that spread to the material that exploded when the temperature exceeded 210 degrees,” the high-ranking security official said.
The official blamed the port authorities for not supervising the repair crew and for storing fireworks alongside a vast deposit of high explosives.
Reuters could not determine what happened to the workers repairing the hangar.
“Only because the hangar faces the sea, the impact of the explosion was reduced. Otherwise all of Beirut would have been destroyed,” he said. “The issue is all about negligence, irresponsibility, bad storage and bad judgment.”
President Donald Trump repeatedly insisted on Monday that any sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations would have to include a substantial payment to the U.S. — but it wasn’t clear under what authority he can extract a payout.
It would be unprecedented, based on recent history, for the U.S. government to collect a cut of a transaction involving companies in which it doesn’t hold a stake. Trump said the money would come from China or an American buyer such as Microsoft Corp.
“The United States should get a very large percentage of that price, because we’re making it possible,” Trump told reporters at a news conference Monday evening. “Whatever the number is, it would come from the sale, which nobody else would be thinking out but me, but that’s the way I think. And I think it’s very fair.”
Earlier in the day, Trump said TikTok will have to close in the U.S. by Sept. 15 — unless there’s a deal to sell the social network’s domestic operations to Microsoft or another American company.
Trump set off a furious scramble over the fate of the Chinese-owned app on Friday, when he said he would ban the company’s operations through an executive action on Saturday. But the weekend passed without any official move from the White House, after the president spoke with Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella about his company’s efforts to purchase the viral video application.
Clock Ticking
Microsoft said in a blog post that it was aiming to complete a deal for TikTok’s operations in the U.S., as well as in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, no later than Sept. 15. The White House had insisted upon that deadline, according to people familiar with the matter. It could prove an uphill climb, with key details for the deal — including price — still not worked out, people familiar with the discussions said.
Microsoft’s blog post also said it’s committed to “providing proper economic benefits to the United States, including the United States Treasury.” That language referred to tax revenue and job creation, according to a person familiar with the matter — rather than some sort of special transaction fee.
Trump compared the arrangement to landlord-tenant dynamics. “Without the lease, the tenant doesn’t have the value,” he said. “Well, we’re sort of in a certain way the lease. We make it possible to have this great success.”
The U.S. assesses fees associated with deals under review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, which investigates overseas acquisitions of U.S. businesses. But those charges — set on a sliding scale and going no higher than $300,000 — didn’t fit what Trump described.
CFIUS has been reviewing ByteDance Ltd.’s 2017 purchase of the lip-synching app Musical.ly that was later folded into TikTok.
The White House has said it’s concerned that ByteDance could be compelled to hand over American users’ data to Beijing or use the app to influence the 165 million Americans, and more than 2 billion users globally, who have downloaded it. And Trump has looked to ratchet up pressure on China ahead of November’s election, frustrated by slow implementation of the trade pact inked earlier this year and the spread of the coronavirus for which he blames China.
— With assistance by Josh Wingrove, Liana Baker, and Dina Bass
High school students know that we can’t simply go back to life as usual. NBC News / Courtesy Emanuelle Sippy / Getty Images
I’m sad that I missed the prom last spring. I’m sad that I missed my final day of 11th grade and saying goodbye to my graduating senior friends. I’m even sad that I missed studying for finals and taking AP tests in a crowded gymnasium and experiencing the exhausted feeling of relief that follows.
But that doesn’t mean I think we should have kept schools open. Unhappy as I may feel, I know the momentary joy of a school dance, even one as momentous as prom, was not worth the accompanying danger to public health. I know that school closures and self-quarantines were necessary measures to keep our community healthy and safe.
Though teens are often accused of being irresponsible risk-takers, my peers and I seem to generally agree that these sacrifices were worth it. In addition to the many friends who have told me so, a student-led education advocacy group in Kentucky that I’m a part of, the Prichard Committee Student Voice Team, conducted a survey in May of more than 9,000 students from 119 counties across the state. Some 84 percent agreed with the decision to close schools to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Students know that our personal desires for a traditional high school experience are outweighed by the common good. We know that to return to school, we need detailed plans to protect students and school employees, ones that follow health recommendations. We know we can’t simply go back to life as usual. So why doesn’t our government?
Over the past weeks, White House officials have called for a return to a pre-pandemic education system. Last week, Trump threatened to withhold federal aid from schools that do not reopen fully, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began recommending that schools return to in-person teaching.
These directives are infuriating. With COVID-19 cases continuing to rise, the administration’s efforts to force me and my peers back into crowded buildings without protection reveal just how little they care for our well-being and for the well-being of our at-risk friends and relatives. I’d rather spend my senior year online than needlessly endanger the lives of my school’s teachers and staff.
It makes me angry that I, a student, have managed to prioritize the guidance of public health officials over my desire for the traditional high school experience when so many government officials struggle to make a similar sacrifice or calculus.
The stereotypical teenage battles with authority have now, quite literally, become a fight for our lives — and contrary to expectations, we’re the ones asking for more rules and restrictions. Instead of arguing with our parents over curfews and social media use, we’re demanding that our policymakers honor our unwillingness to go back to school if we can’t do so safely.
Despite students’ concerns, some states are starting to act on President Donald Trump’s suggestions. In Jefferson, Georgia, for instance, schools are opening in-person without requiring students and teachers wear masks, practically guaranteeing the spread of the coronavirus. They’re doing this notwithstanding vocal complaints from much of the student body and nationwide polls showing Americans are still concerned about reopening schools.
In Florida, teachers unions are suing to block a July 6 emergency order that requires schools to be open five days a week. In South Carolina, Gov. Henry McMaster made similar demands that schools offer in-person instruction.
Other countries are demonstrating that a safe return seems possible. In nations across Asia and Europe, schools have reopened without major outbreaks. But those countries waited until their COVID-19 caseloads were relatively under control before sending students and staff into what would otherwise be hotbeds of infection.
They also took significant precautions before attempting in-person education, precautions I am happy to take myself when my school eventually transitions away from virtual learning. From distancing desks and staggering class schedules to daily temperature checks and mandatory mask policies, there are dozens of measures that can alleviate the risks created by a pandemic that’s still raging.
School systems, however, must also help students in a holistic way. COVID-19 has made it harder for students to access mental health care even as they experience increased feelings of depression and anxiety, while the economic crisis is creating new difficulties for students and families. Schools have historically played a role in providing social services, mental health assistance and nutritious meals, a role that needs to be amplified in the coming months.
In Kentucky, at least, most school administrators seem to recognize the danger facing students, teachers and staff. After exploring a variety of hybrid options, like having only half the student body come to school on a given day, my district recently announced that we would start the semester virtually.
This news was disappointing, to say the least, but also a relief. I’m glad my state has taken the safer, more rational course of action. But the confirmation that I won’t be seeing the vast majority of my friends or teachers this August, that I’ll be spending the foreseeable future mostly confined within the walls of my house, brought on a fresh feeling of loss and dismay.
It also made me wish we had taken more forceful action sooner. It made me wish we hadn’t let our desire to reopen the country at all costs outweigh our respect for undeniable facts.
The inability of our policymakers to grasp a concept that a fifth grader could understand is highlighting something students have known all along: Our voices matter. As the direct recipients of education, we deserve to be included in decisions that impact our everyday lives. The public officials determining what school will look like during a pandemic need to listen more to public health experts — but also to students, who spend over 30 hours a week experiencing firsthand the impacts of their policies.
We won’t go back to a school that’s unconcerned with our health and safety. We won’t listen to the mandates of a school system that won’t listen to us.
