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What to know about the Trump indictment on the…
What to know about the Trump indictment on the eve of his court appearance
What to know about the Trump indictment on the eve of his court appearance
A judge ruled in January that Dartmoor Park campers would need landowners’ permission.
Haberman reveals why Trump attacked judge and his family in speech
CNN political contributor Maggie Haberman explains the reasoning behind Donald Trump’s attacks on the judge and his family during a speech at his Mar-a-Lago resort after he was arraigned on felony charges.
CNN
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A Syrian who arrived in Germany as a refugee in 2015 has won a mayoral election in the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg.
Ryyan Alshebl, who left his hometown of As Suwayda in Syria eight years ago, ran as an independent in the municipality of Ostelsheim. He won 55.41% of the votes on Sunday, beating two German candidates, Marco Strauss and Mathias Fey.
Locals cheered the 29-year-old when he welcomed his win, a victory he described as “sensational,” German local broadcaster SWR reported Monday.
“Today, Ostelsheim sent an example for broad-mindedness and cosmopolitanism for the whole of Germany,” he said, according to to German public broadcaster ZDF. “That’s not something that can be taken for granted in a conservative, rural area.”
Alshebl’s first call after his victory was to his mother in Syria, who was thrilled with the news, SWR reported.
The Association of Municipalities of Baden-Württemberg said Alshebl is the first man with Syrian roots to run for and win a mayor’s office. He will start his role in June.
Ostelsheim residents have welcomed their incoming mayor. “The fairy tale has come true, and the right man has become our mayor,” Annette Keck, who lives in the village, told SWR.
Strauss, one of his opponents, congratulated Alshebl. “I wish you good luck and at the same time ask for support for Mr. Alshebl, for our shared Ostelsheim,” he said on Facebook.
The state’s Integration Minister Manne Lucha said that Alshebl’s victory showed that diversity is a natural part of Baden-Württemberg. “I would be very pleased if Ryyan Alshebl’s election encourages more people with a migration history to run for political office,” he said.
Not everyone has been so warm to the 29-year-old. ZDF reported the Syrian received hateful comments on the campaign trail.
The young politician went from house to house, promoting his election program, and “the experiences were predominantly positive,” but there was also a minority of far-right fringe voters in Ostelsheim that did not want to accept him due to his Syrian roots, Alshebl told ZDF.
Born to a schoolteacher and agricultural engineer in Syria, Alshebl described his life as carefree until the age of 20, according to his campaign website.
At the time, protests against the Syrian government that began in 2011 soon devolved into chaotic war. The fighting and later rise of ISIS forced 10.6 million people from home by late 2015 – about half of Syria’s pre-war population.
Alshebl faced the dilemma of being drafted for military service with the Syrian army or leaving the country, according to his website.
While many Syrians were displaced internally or fled to countries in the region, others like Alshebl made the dangerous journey to Europe. He was 21 years old at the time, and said he crossed from Turkey to the Greek island of Lesbos in a rubber dinghy.
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel had implemented a brief open-door policy in 2015 that saw the country take in about 1.2 million asylum seekers in the following years, including Alshebl.
The move sparked a backlash in Germany and the sudden growth of the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the wake of summer 2015.
Once in Germany, Alshebl lived close to Ostelsheim and said at the time he felt “there is only one thing you can do: get back on your feet quickly and start investing in your own future quickly.”
For the last seven years he worked in the administration of Althengstett town hall, in a neighboring town. He drew from his experience, he said in his campaign, and made digital access to to public administration services one of priorities. Flexible childcare and climate protections are also on his agenda.
Alshebl, who is a member of the Green Party and now has German citizenship, pledged during his campaign that once elected as mayor he would move to Ostelsheim.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Art Newspaper, an editorial partner of CNN Style.
CNN
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Kwame Brathwaite, the pioneering activist and photographer whose work helped define the aesthetics of the “Black is Beautiful” movement of the 1960s and beyond, died on April 1, aged 85.
His son, Kwame Brathwaite, Jr, announced his father’s death in an Instagram post that read in part, “I am deeply saddened to share that my Baba, the patriarch of our family, our rock and my hero has transitioned.”
Brathwaite’s work has been the subject of resurgent interest from curators, historians and collectors in recent years, and his first major institutional retrospective, which was organized by the Aperture Foundation, made its debut in 2019 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles before touring the country.
Brathwaite was born in 1938 to Barbadian immigrants, in what he referred to as “the People’s Republic of Brooklyn” in New York, though his family moved from there to Harlem and then to the South Bronx when Brathwaite was 5 years old. He attended the School of Industrial Art (now the High School of Art and Design) and, according to profiles of Brathwaite in T Magazine and Vice, was drawn to photography by two moments. The first was in August of 1955, when a 17-year-old Brathwaite encountered David Jackson’s haunting photograph of a brutalized Emmett Till in his open casket. The second was in 1956, when — after he and his brother Elombe co-founded the African Jazz Arts Society and Studios (AJASS) — Brathwaite saw a young man taking photos in a dark jazz club without the use of a flash, and his mind became alight with possibility.
Using a Hasselblad medium-format camera, Brathwaite attempted to do the same, learning to work with limited light in a manner that enhanced the visual narrative of his imagery. He would soon also develop a darkroom technique that enriched and deepened how Black skin would appear in his photography, honing the practice in a small darkroom in his Harlem apartment. Brathwaite went on to photograph jazz legends performing throughout the 1950s and ’60s, including Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and others.
“You want to get the feeling, the mood that you’re experiencing when they’re playing,” Brathwaite told Aperture Magazine in 2017. “That’s the thing. You want to capture that.”
By the early 1960s, alongside the rest of AJASS, Brathwaite began using his photography and organizing prowess to consciously push back against whitewashed, Eurocentric beauty standards. The group came up with the concept of the Grandassa Models, young Black women whom Brathwaite would photograph, celebrating and accentuating their features. In 1962, AJASS organized “Naturally ’62”, a fashion show held in a Harlem club called the Purple Manor and featuring the models. The show would go on to be held regularly until 1992. In 1966, Brathwaite married his wife Sikolo, a Grandassa Model whom he had met on the street the year prior when he asked if he could take her portrait. The two remained married for the rest of Brathwaite’s life.
By the 1970s, Brathwaite’s focus on jazz shifted to other forms of popular Black music. In 1974, he traveled to Africa with the Jackson Five to document their tour, also photographing the historic “Rumble in the Jungle” boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in what’s now the Democratic Republic of Congo that same year. Commissions in this era also saw Brathwaite photographing Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, Bob Marley and other music legends.
Throughout the ensuing decades, Brathwaite continued to explore and develop his mode of photography, all through the lens of the “Black is Beautiful” ethos. In 2016, Brathwaite joined the roster of Philip Martin Gallery in Los Angeles, and he was continuing to photograph commissions as recently as 2018, when he shot artist and stylist Joanne Petit-Frère for The New Yorker.
T Magazine’s 2021 profile, published on the occasion of Brathwaite’s retrospective traveling to the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, noted that the photographer’s health was failing such that he was unable to be interviewed for the article. A separate exhibition, “Kwame Brathwaite: Things Well Worth Waiting For,” is currently on view at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it will remain until July 24.
Top image: Kwame Brathwaite, “Untitled (Sikolo Brathwaite, Orange Portrait),” 1968
London
CNN
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The British pound crashed to a record low last fall as investors rebelled against budget plans by former Prime Minister Liz Truss. Now, it’s enjoying a comeback.
Sterling hit its highest level against the US dollar in 10 months on Tuesday, topping $1.25 for the first time since June 2022. The pound, which has advanced about 3.3% versus the greenback since the start of 2023, is the best-performing currency among developed economies this year.
The UK currency has been boosted by indications the country’s economy is holding up better than expected. Activity is now thought to have expanded 0.1% in the final three months of last year, up from a previous estimate of no growth at all. Gross domestic product growth in January has been estimated at 0.3% after dropping 0.5% in December.
This resilience is bolstering expectations the Bank of England will maintain aggressive interest rate hikes despite concerns about the health of the global banking sector. Rising rates can boost the domestic currency because they help attract foreign investors searching for higher returns.
Inflation in the United Kingdom also jumped to an annual rate of 10.4% in February, underscoring the need for the Bank of England to maintain its tough approach.
The pound plunged close to $1.03 in September 2022 after the Truss government unveiled plans to boost borrowing while slashing taxes, unleashing panic in financial markets that fueled fears of a recession in the United Kingdom.
The International Monetary Fund predicted in January that the UK economy would contract by 0.6% this year, while all other advanced economies would grow, if only slightly.
“There was a lot of pessimism being priced into the pound,” said Francesco Pesole, a currency strategist at ING.
But the sharp pullback in energy prices and China’s reopening have provided some relief about the economic outlook since the start of the year.
“There was a big re-rating of growth expectations around Europe, and that impacted the UK,” Pesole said.
The euro has also been lifted by these dynamics, rising 2.3% against the US dollar in 2023. The pound’s rally has been sharper in large part because its 2022 declines were more severe, according to Pesole.
Both currencies have been aided by the greenback’s sharp drop from highs reached last September as recession fears have percolated in the United States.
A lack of clarity around the Federal Reserve’s next steps has also restrained the dollar in recent weeks. Investor speculation has increased that the Fed could pause or stop rate hikes due to concerns about the economy following the failure of Silicon Valley Bank last month.
Jordan Rochester, a currency strategist at Nomura, said he thinks the pound could rise to $1.30 this year and “potentially higher.” But he still sees risks given the uncertainty surrounding the Bank of England’s plans and how rate rises will feed back through the country’s economy. And Pesole cautioned that currency fluctuations are often overdone when markets are choppy, as they are now.
“In a volatile market environment, moves are exacerbated,” he said.
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CNN
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Astronauts who will helm the first crewed moon mission in five decades were revealed on Monday, queuing up the quartet to begin training for the historic Artemis II lunar flyby that is set to take off in November 2024.
The astronauts are NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency.
Wiseman is a 47-year-old decorated naval aviator and test pilot who was first selected to be a NASA astronaut in 2009. A native of Baltimore, Maryland, he’s completed one prior spaceflight, a 165-day trip to the International Space Station that had launched aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket in 2014. Most recently, Wiseman served as chief of the astronaut office before stepping down in November 2022, making him eligible for a flight assignment.
Wiseman will serve as commander of the Artemis II mission.
Hansen, 47, is a fighter pilot who was selected by the Canadian Space Agency for astronaut training in 2009. From London, Ontario, Hansen is one of only four active Canadian astronauts, and he recently became the first Canadian to be put in charge of training for a new class of NASA astronauts.
He will be the first Canadian ever to travel to deep space.
Glover is a 46-year-old naval aviator who returned to Earth from his first spaceflight in 2021 after piloting the second crewed flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and spending nearly six months aboard the International Space Station.
“It’s so much more than the four names that have been announced,” Glover said during the Monday announcement at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. “We need to celebrate this moment in human history. … It is the next step in the journey that will get humanity to Mars.”
Glover, born in Pomona, California, served in several military squadrons in the United States and Japan in the 2000s, and he completed test pilot training with the US Air Force. When he was selected for the NASA astronaut corps in 2013, he was working in the US Senate as a legislative fellow. All told, Glover logged 3,000 flight hours in more than 40 aircraft, over 400 carrier arrested landings and 24 combat missions.
Glover’s first mission to space was as part of the SpaceX Crew-1 team, which launched to the International Space Station in November 2020 for a six-month stay on the orbiting laboratory.
Koch, 44, is a veteran of six spacewalks — including the first all-female spacewalk in 2019. She holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, with a total of 328 days in space. Koch is also an an electrical engineer who helped develop scientific instruments for multiple NASA mission. Koch, a native of Grand Rapids, Michigan, also spent a year at the South Pole, an arduous stay that could well prepare her for the intensity of a moon mission.
The Artemis II mission will build on Artemis I, an uncrewed test mission that sent NASA’s Orion capsule on a 1.4 million-mile voyage to lap the moon that concluded in December. The space agency deemed that mission a success and is still working to review all the data collected.
If all goes to plan, Artemis II will take off around November 2024. The crew members, strapped inside the Orion spacecraft, will launch atop a NASA-developed Space Launch System rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The journey is expected to last about 10 days and will send the crew out beyond the moon, potentially further than any human has traveled in history, though the exact distance is yet to be determined.
The “exact distance beyond the Moon will depend on the day of liftoff and the relative distance of the Moon from the Earth at the time of the mission,” NASA spokesperson Kathryn Hambleton said via email.
After circling the moon, the spacecraft will return to Earth for a splashdown landing in the Pacific Ocean.
Artemis II is expected to pave the way for the Artemis III mission later this decade, which NASA has vowed will put the first woman and person of color on the lunar surface. It will also mark the first time humans have touched down on the moon since the Apollo program ended in 1972.
The Artemis III mission is expected to take off later this decade. But much of the technology the mission will require, including spacesuits for walking on the moon and a lunar lander to ferry the astronauts to the moon’s surface, is still in development.
NASA is targeting a 2025 launch date for Artemis III, though the space agency’s inspector general has already said delays will likely push the mission to 2026 or later.
The space agency has been seeking to return people to the moon for more than a decade. The Artemis program was designed to pave the way to establishing a permanent lunar outpost, allowing astronauts to live and work deeper into space long term as NASA and its partners map a path to sending the first humans to Mars.
Vanessa Wyche, the director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, declined to provide details to CNN about the selection process. But she emphasized the diversity of the Artemis II crew, which includes men and women rather than only a staff of White male test pilots as has been the case for historic missions of the past.
“I can tell you, they still all have the right stuff,” Wyche said. “We have requirements different than we did (when we) just had test pilots” on inaugural missions.
Koch said in an interview with CNN’s Ed Lavandera that the group found out they were selected a few weeks ago.
“We were all sent to a meeting that was on our calendars under a different pretext that didn’t sound as lofty as the one it was going to be,” Koch said. “And accidentally two of us were very late to that meeting.”
She said the offer rendered her “speechless.”
“It truly is an honor,” she added. “It’s an honor — not to get myself in the space — but because it’s amazing to be a part of this team that’s going back to the moon and on to Mars.”
An interview with the four astronauts will air on “CNN This Morning” on Tuesday, which starts at 6 am ET.
Editor’s Note: Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.
CNN
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Originally a term used by trophy hunters in Africa, the “Big Five” described the animals most challenging to shoot and kill: the lion, elephant, leopard, rhino, and buffalo. Nowadays, it is more loosely used to refer to some of Africa’s largest and most iconic animals.
However, British photographer Graeme Green has reclaimed the narrative, creating a global “New Big Five” for wildlife photography. In 2021, 50,000 people around the world voted for the five animals they would most like to photograph, or see photographed, in the wild. Five animals were crowned the winners: the elephant, polar bear, lion, gorilla and tiger.
This week, sees the publication of “The New Big 5” photography book, which features images of those animals and other at-risk wildlife, from photography legends such as Ami Vitale, Steve McCurry and Paul Nicklen, and essays from famous conservationists and activists including like Jane Goodall and Paula Kahumbu.
Green says that the book celebrates wildlife and is a global call to action on issues impacting wildlife, including habitat loss, poaching, pollution and climate change.
Green was on assignment in Botswana at least a decade ago when he came up with the idea for a project to encourage people to “shoot with a camera, not a gun,” he says.
“I thought this would be a way to get people really focusing on wildlife, thinking about the wildlife they love, thinking about the animals that are at risk.”
In total, the book includes the work of 144 globally renowned wildlife photographers from Ecuador to India. Curating the images took nearly two years of work, says Green.
“I think these are some of the most beautiful and creative images that I’ve seen put together in one book,” says Green. “These are the species that we are at risk of losing.”
According to the UN, nature is declining at an unprecedented rate, with around one million of the planet’s animal and plant species facing extinction. The “New Big 5,” all of which are threatened, act as ambassadors for what is happening in the natural world, says Green.
As well as being a powerful reminder of what we stand to lose, the book also points people towards potential solutions. Featured essays explore the benefits of rewilding and the importance of indigenous communities in conservation.
A chapter on endangered species from bees to blue whales illustrates the alarming threat climate change poses to animals outside of the “New Big 5.” “That’s only the tip of the iceberg – I could have included thousands of pictures because that’s how serious the situation is,” says Green.
Jane Goodall, a leading conservationist who also wrote the afterword to the book, said in a press release that “we have a window of time during which we can start to heal some of the harm we have inflicted on the natural world, but only if we get together and take action now.
“I hope the photos will lead people into the wonderful worlds of these iconic species. Then, perhaps, other people will become involved in helping to create a world where wildlife can flourish for future generations to enjoy,” she said.
“The New Big 5: A Global Photography Project For Endangered Wildlife,” by Graeme Green, published by Earth Aware Editions, is on sale from April 4, 2023.
CNN
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The University of Connecticut won its fifth men’s basketball national title with a 76-59 victory over San Diego State University on Monday night at NRG Stadium in Houston.
Senior guard Tristen Newton led UConn (31-8) with 19 points and 10 rebounds while Final Four Most Outstanding Player Adama Sanogo, a junior forward, chipped in with 17 points and 10 rebounds.
“We weren’t ranked going into the year so we had the chip on our shoulder,” UConn head coach Dan Hurley told game broadcaster CBS. “We knew the level that we could play at, even through those dark times,” he added, referencing the team’s six losses in eight games during the regular season.
He said going into the tournament his group had confidence garnered during the season.
“And when you have the type of leaders like Andre Jackson (game-high six assists Monday) and Adama Sanogo, they kept this team together, got us back on track and we knew we were the best team in the tournament going in and we just had to play to our level,” he added.
San Diego State (32-7) was topped by Keshad Johnson who had 14 points.
UConn trailed very early but San Diego State was undone by an 11-minute, eight-second stretch in which they scored just five free throws and missed 12 consecutive shots from the field. The Huskies went from down 10-6 to up 36-24 at halftime.
The Aztecs made a run midway through the second half and narrowed the deficit to five at 60-55 with 5:19 to play but the Huskies scored the next nine to take a comfortable lead into the final two minutes.
“We battled. Battled back to five in the second half, but gave them too much separation,” San Diego State coach Brian Dutcher said. “We had to be at our best. We weren’t at our best. A lot had to do with UConn.”
Senior guard Adam Seiko told reporters they gave themselves a chance with their second half comeback but UConn “just made a little bit more plays” at the end.
“They have a lot of weapons. They were pretty good,” said Matt Bradley, also a senior guard. “To beat them, we had to make shots. I shot poorly. And you had to have a really good game to beat those dudes on the offensive end.”
UConn won each of its six tournament games by at least 10 points, with its closest game being a 13-point win over the University of Miami in the national semifinals.
“I just want to thank my teammates, my coaches who believed in me. If it were not for them I would not be here right now,” Sanogo told CBS.
Jordan Hawkins, who scored 16 points for UConn, talked about winning the crown one day after his cousin, Angel Reese of Louisiana State University, won the women’s title.
“I mean it’s absolutely amazing that we both get this opportunity and I mean the family reunion is going to be great so that’s all I know,” he said.
UConn enters rarefied air as only the sixth team to win five NCAA men’s basketball championships, joining UCLA (11), Kentucky (eight), North Carolina (six), Duke (five) and Indiana (five). All of UConn’s titles have come since 1999 with the most recent before Monday occurring in 2014.
UConn’s women’s teams have won 11 basketball national titles.