Category Archives: Stories

World Economic Forum: Top Stories – April 15, 2022

This week The World Economic Forum are highlighting 4 top stories – workers paid to relocate to rural areas, an innovative aircraft design, a lifesaving slime robot, and a wind and solar energy milestone.

Timeline: 00:15 Workers paid to relocate 01:40 New aircraft design takes flight 03:11 Lifesaving slime robot 04:22 Wind and solar energy milestone

The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. We believe that progress happens by bringing together people from all walks of life who have the drive and the influence to make positive change.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

This week: Tom Seymour talks to the photographer Edward Burtynsky as he is recognised for his Outstanding Contribution to his medium in the Sony World Photography Awards. He discusses the Russian invasion and his Ukrainian heritage. 

In this episode’s Work of the Week, we look at Winslow Homer’s most famous work, The Gulf Stream (1899, reworked by 1906), which is at the heart of a new show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Sylvia Yount and Stephanie Herdrich, the curators of the exhibition, discuss the making, reception and legacy of the painting. And we talk to Lisa Movius about the decision by the Nord regional government in France to suspend plans for the exhibition Matisse by Matisse—a collaboration between Musée Matisse le Cateau-Cambrésis and the private Beijing museum UCCA—over China’s supposedly neutral position on Russia’s invasion. Will other Western authorities or arts organisations follow suit?

Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition 2022, Somerset House, London, until 2 May. Edward Burtynsky’s multimedia project In the Wake of Progress is at the Luminato Festival, Toronto, 11-12 June.

Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, until 31 July. Winslow Homer: Force of Nature, National Gallery, London, 10 September-8 January 2023.

Previews: The Economist Magazine – April 16, 2022

Africa Views: The Cassava Flour Boom In Cameroon

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues to impact crucial food exports, wheat prices are soaring. Many African countries rely on Ukrainian and Russian grain exports and could face a severe food crisis. But in Cameroon, entrepreneurs are coming up with alternatives to wheat, which is used to make flour. Production of bread and cakes made from local cassava and sweet potato flour is now booming. These tubers are abundant in the country but are normally used unprocessed in traditional dishes. Our correspondents report.

Previews: Times Literary Supplement – April 15, 2022

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Previews: London Review Of Books – April 21, 2022

English Country Houses: Ancient ‘Hunton Court’ Near Maidstone In Kent

Hunton Court is an ancient house hiding behind a breathtaking Georgian facade, and all set in a truly beautiful corner of Kent.

Take a quick look at Hunton Court — near Maidstone, in Kent — and you’d immediately mark it down as an 18th century country house. Yet its true origins lie many centuries earlier: it’s a building that hides its timbered origins behind a Georgian look.

The house, once known as Court Lodge, had a turbulent history: first built in the 13th century and part of an estate that had belonged to the Canterbury’s Christ Church Priory, it was handed to Sir Thomas Wyatt, Henry VIII’s High Sheriff for Kent, after the Dissolution of Monasteries.

Political Views: Emmanuel Macron’s Future, Russian War Crimes, Headset Wars

A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, why Emmanuel Macron’s fate matters beyond Francewar crimes in Ukraine (11:05) and we explore the new headset wars between tech firms (16:05).

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – April 18, 2022

April 18, 2022 – The street corner on this week’s cover, with towering luxury condos rising among modest family homes, evokes a neighborhood in transition—a scene that is being repeated across New York City’s outer boroughs. We talked to the artist Nicole Rifkin, who lived in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights before rising rents pushed her out, about a sense of belonging and observing the small details of the place where you live.

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