A new United Nations survey finds that opium cultivation in Afghanistan has decreased by 20 percent in 2018 compared to the previous year, citing a severe drought and falling prices of dry opium at the national level.

The total opium-poppy cultivation area decreased to 263,000 hectares, from 328,000 hectares estimated in 2017, but it was

still the second highest measurement for Afghanistan since the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) began monitoring in 1994.

The potential opium production decreased by 29 percent to 6,400 tons from an estimated 9,000 tons in 2017.

The UNODC country representative, Mark Colhoun, while explaining factors behind the reduction told reporters in Kabul the farm-gate prices of dry opium at the harvest time fell to $94 per kilogram, the lowest since 2004.

The decreases, in particular in the northern and western Afghan regions, were mainly attributed to the severe drought that hit the country during the course of the last year, he added.

“Despite these decreases, the overall area under opium-poppy cultivation is still the highest ever recorded. This is a clear challenge to security and safety for the region and beyond. It is also a threat to all countries to and through which these drugs are trafficked as well as to Afghanistan itself,” said Colhoun.

He warned that more high-quality low-cost heroin will reach consumer markets across the world, with increased consumption and related harms as a further likely consequence.

“The significant levels of opium-poppy cultivation and illicit trafficking of opiates will further fuel instability, insurgency and increase funding to terrorist groups in Afghanistan,” he said.

Colhoun noted that while there is no single explanation for the continuing high levels of opium-poppy cultivation, rule of law-related challenges such as political instability, lack of government control and security as well as corruption have been found to be among the main drivers of illicit cultivation.

The UNODC survey estimated that the total farm-gate value of opium production decreased by 56 percent to $604 million, which is equivalent to three percent of Afghanistan’s GDP, from $1.4 billion in 2017. The lowest prices strongly undermined the income earned from opium cultivation by farmers.

The study finds that 24 out of the 34 Afghan provinces grew the opium-poppy in 2018, the same number as in the previous year.

The survey found that 69 percent of the opium poppy cultivation took place in southern Afghanistan and the largest province of Helmand remained the leading opium-poppy cultivating region followed by neighboring Kandahar and Uruzgan and Nangarhar in the east.

It noted that opium poppy weeding and harvesting provided for the equivalent of up to 354,000 full-time jobs to rural areas in 2017.

A U.S. government agency, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), has noted in its latest report that as of September 30, Washington’s counternarcotics-related appropriations for the country had reached almost $9 billion.

“Despite the importance of the threat narcotics pose to reconstruction and despite massive expenditures for programs including poppy-crop eradication, drug seizures and interdictions, alternative-livelihood support, aviation support, and incentives for provincial governments, the drug trade remains entrenched in Afghanistan, and is growing,” said Sigar, which monitors U.S. civilian and military spendings in the country.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

Japanese automaker Nissan says it has determined that its chairman, Carlos Ghosn, falsified reports about his compensation “over many years.” The company said its internal investigation also found Ghosn had used company assets for personal purposes.

Japanese media are reporting Monday that Ghosn is being questioned by Tokyo prosecutors on allegations that he underreported his income and that he will likely be arrested.

Ghosn is suspected of failing to report hundreds of millions of dollars in income.

Nissan says Ghosn will be dismissed from the company.

The Ashai newspaper reported that prosecutors have raided Nissan’s headquarters in Yokohama.

The Brazilian-born Ghosn, who is of Lebanese descent and a French citizen, was the rare foreign top executive in Japan.

Ghosn was sent to Nissan in the late 1990s by Renault SA of France, after it bought a controlling stake of Nissan. He is credited with rescuing Nissan from the brink of bankruptcy.

In 2016, Ghosn also took control of Mitsubishi, after Nissan bought a one-third stake in the company, following Mitsubishi’s mileage-cheating scandal.

“If he is arrested, it’s going to rock the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance as he is the keystone of the alliance,” said Satoru Takada, an analyst at TIW, a Tokyo-based research and consulting firm.

Shares in Renault fell more than 12 percent in late morning trading in Paris after the news about Ghosn came out.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

The United States and China offered competing views to regional leaders at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings in Papua New Guinea, trading sharp words over trade, investment, and regional security.  Washington said it can provide a better option for regional allies under is “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” strategy.  as VOA’s State Department correspondent Nike Ching reports, the APEC gathering ended without a formal leaders’ statement.
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From: MeNeedIt

Humans have been genetically modifying foods for centuries. Wild tomatoes or carrots for instance don’t look much like the mass produced foods we eat today. But in these days of genetic modification, consumers have tended to keep so called “Frankenfoods” at arms length. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports a new generation of precision editing techniques may change that.
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From: MeNeedIt

The small town of Utqiagvik, Alaska, is the northernmost town in the United States. Entertainment is scarce and so is the list of jobs. A lot of locals still hunt and fish, and there is room for art here as well. As Natasha Mozgovaya reports, indigenous carvers have been creating beautiful figurines, intricate miniature sculptures and jewelry from very Alaskan materials.
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From: MeNeedIt

While the Space Needle may be the most recognizable structure in Seattle, Washington, there is another spectacular and futuristic building nearby: Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture. Initially built as a tribute to the legendary Seattle rock musician Jimi Hendrix, it now celebrates American contemporary pop culture as a whole. One display is dedicated to the Marvel Comics Super Heroes, whose creator, Stan Lee, died at 95 earlier this week. Natasha Mozgovaya gives us a look.
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From: MeNeedIt

British-based startup ARC unveiled its first motorcycle model in Milan this week, one being described as fast, advanced and expensive. The so-called Vector costs more than $100,000, but ARC says it’s for good reason. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

Hundreds of protesters have turned out in central London and blocked off the capital’s main bridges to demand the government take climate change seriously.

A group called “Extinction Rebellion” encouraged sit-ins on the bridges Saturday as part of a coordinated week of action across the country.

Metropolitan Police said emergency vehicles were hampered from getting across London because of the “blockade” of five bridges. The force said it had asked all protesters to congregate at Westminster Bridge where officers can facilitate lawful protest.

About two dozen people were arrested on Monday after protesters blocked traffic and glued themselves to gates outside the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

A load of space station supplies rocketed into orbit from Virginia on Saturday, the second shipment in two days.

And another commercial delivery should be on its way in a couple weeks.

“What an outstanding launch,” said NASA’s deputy space station program manager, Joel Montalbano.

Northrop Grumman launched its Antares rocket from Wallops Island before dawn, delighting chilly early-bird observers along the Atlantic coast. The Russian Space Agency launched its own supplies to the International Space Station on Friday, just 15 hours earlier.

The U.S. delivery will arrive at the orbiting lab Monday, a day after the Russian shipment. Among the 7,400 pounds (3,350 kilograms) of goods inside the Cygnus capsule: ice cream and fresh fruit for the three space station residents, and a 3D printer that recycles old plastic into new parts.

Thanksgiving turkey dinners — rehydratable, of course — are already aboard the 250-mile-high outpost. The space station is currently home to an American, a German and a Russian.

There’s another big event coming up, up there: The space station marks its 20th year in orbit on Tuesday. The first section launched on Nov. 20, 1998, from Kazakhstan.

“As we celebrate 20 years of the International Space Station,” Montalbano noted, “one of the coolest things is the cooperation we have across the globe.” Then there’s the U.S. commercial effort to keep the space station stocked and, beginning next year, to resume crew launches from Cape Canaveral. “To me, it’s been a huge success,” he said.

This Cygnus, or Swan, is named the S.S. John Young to honor the legendary astronaut who walked on the moon and commanded the first space shuttle flight. He died in January.

It is the first commercial cargo ship to bear Northrop Grumman’s name. Northrop Grumman acquired Orbital ATK in June. SpaceX is NASA’s other commercial shipper for the space station; its Dragon capsule is set to lift off in early December.

Experiments arriving via the Cygnus will observe how cement solidifies in weightlessness, among other things. There’s also medical, spacesuit and other equipment to replace items that never made it to orbit last month because of a Russian rocket failure; the two men who were riding the rocket survived their emergency landing. Three other astronauts are set to launch from Kazakhstan on Dec. 3.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

Fashion changes, trends come and go, but jewelry is always present in people’s lives in one way or another. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art just opened a new exhibition dedicated to the history of jewelry and the role it plays in people’s lives. Headdresses and earrings, brooches and belts, necklaces and rings, old and new, traditional and provocative, jewelry never cease to surprise and amaze. Nina Vishneva reports. Anna Rice narrates.
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From: MeNeedIt

The weight of legacy hangs heavily over Creed II. Not just for most of the characters, who must come to grips with their own family histories, but also for the filmmakers, tasked with making a sequel to a successful spin-off of a beloved franchise. It would put any film on the ropes. Not this one.

Creed II pulls off a rather amazing feat by adding to the luster of its predecessor and propelling the narrative into a bright future while also reaching back to honor its past, resurrecting unfinished business from Rocky IV and adding a dash of Rocky III. Pound per pound, the sequel might even be better than its predecessor.

Steven Caple Jr. replaced Ryan Coogler in the director’s chair this time, but there is plenty of continuity: Michael B. Jordan returns as Adonis Creed, with Sylvester Stallone by his side as former heavyweight champ and trainer Rocky Balboa. Also back: Tessa Thompson as Creed’s love interest, Phylicia Rashad as Creed’s mom, and Wood Harris as a coach. Max Kellerman is ringside again as color commentator.

The sequel pits Creed against man-mountain Viktor Drago, the son of Ivan Drago, who killed Adonis Creed’s father, Apollo Creed, in the ring in Rocky IV. That stirs up trauma for Rocky, who feels responsible for the elder Creed’s demise. Rocky went on to avenge the death by beating the elder Drago, but we also now learn what that disgrace meant for the Dragos. This film is about ghosts as much as it is a meditation on fatherhood. At one point, Kellerman says the showdown between the sons of Creed and Drago is almost like a Shakespearian drama and — laugh if you must — it feels sort of right here.

Desire — or lack of it — plays a key role in Creed II since we meet young Adonis as the new champion, at the top. Viktor Drago is at the bottom, hauling cement in Ukraine and burning for family redemption. “My son will break your boy,” Ivan Drago threatens Rocky, who sort of agrees. “When a fighter’s got nothing to lose he’s dangerous,” he warns Creed. “Listen, that kid was raised in hate. You weren’t.” Dolph Lungren returns as the elder Drago and there’s even an appearance by Brigitte Nielsen, who plays Drago’s wife in 1985 and was a real-life wife of Stallone. (Talk about keeping it in the family.)

Caple matches Coogler’s moody, gritty vision of a brutal sport conducted by mostly honorable men trying to outwit each other. There’s plenty of gore, slo-mos of smashed heads and Rocky trademarks — the glorious montages with uplifting music as fighters prepare for their shot in the ring. (Prepare to look away if you are fans of massive truck tires — many get horrible beat downs.)

Stallone got his mitts on the script — after having had a role penning all the Rocky films but sitting out writing Creed — and teams up with Cheo Hodari Coker, creator of the Netflix superhero hit Luke Cage. Onscreen, Stallone returns with his dark fedora and small bouncing ball, shuffling about and mumbling, allowing his sad eyes to do the bulk of his acting. It’s in the small moments between crusty Stallone and cocky Jordan where the film finds its sweet spot. “What are you fightin’ for?” the elder man asks the younger.

Jordan proves again that he’s a film force to be reckoned with, capable of searing and savage intensity and yet also goofy softness. This time, his swagger is tested and he must overcome intense pain and anguish. Watching him get up off the canvas again and again will make even the most uncharitable viewer cheer. As Adonis, he wants to carve his own legacy away from his father’s: “This is our chance to rewrite history. Our history,” Creed tells Rocky.

Thompson and Rashad both temper the piles of testosterone onscreen as women who steer and guide the young Adonis. Thompson’s character is battling progressive hearing loss and that is handled intelligently by the writers. There’s even a scene when Adonis is punched so hard that he falls in silence and looks over at her, both connected for a moment in enveloping quiet.

The filmmakers, meanwhile, are creating their own family legacy. Both Creed films share the same composer (Ludwig Goransson), art director (Jesse Rosenthal), special effects coordinator (Patrick White), costumer (Rita Squitiere) and location manager (Patricia Taggart). The films even have the same barber for Jordan (Kenny Duncan). And Coogler didn’t go far — he’s an executive producer.

But while a Creed III is almost guaranteed, there may be dangers ahead if the filmmakers choose to keep reopening old wounds or plundering story lines from the past. And the creep toward more cinematic bombast needs to be watched vigilantly. (Remember how nuts the last few Rocky films got?) Having said that, this spin-off franchise is clearly in very good hands — ones that are heavily wrapped, protected by a glove and aiming for your gut.
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From: MeNeedIt

Oscar nominee Matthew Heineman has often put his life on the line while filming award-winning documentaries such as Cartel Land, chronicling wars of Mexican drug cartels, and throwing a light on the atrocities of the Islamic State group in City of Ghosts.

Now, Heineman is releasing his first feature film, A Private War, about another subject close to his heart: Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin, who staked her life on the war fronts of Sri Lanka, Iraq and Syria in order to bring attention to the plight of war victims. 

In A Private War, Oscar-nominated actress Rosamund Pike transforms herself into Colvin, a gritty, fierce, inquisitive American journalist who dedicated her life to reporting on atrocities around the world. 

Pike evokes the journalist’s inexorable drive to cover wars to show the world the plight of war victims and bring truth to light. She also portrays Colvin as a person suffering from PTSD and addiction to alcohol and to her job. And there was the physical toll. Colvin lost her left eye in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Sri Lanka in 2001. 

Her actions, presence

“Getting into her physicality, which meant changing everything, I had to learn to smoke convincingly, because for Marie, everything was better with a cigarette — every conversation, every car drive,” Pike told VOA. “I had to see the way with which she gestured with her hands — she had these wide-apart fingers. I had to work out how the eye patch made her angle her head differently — how she could penetrate you and sear you with one eye as good as someone else could dress you down with two.” 

In an onscreen soliloquy about her inner demons as Colvin, Pike outlined the personal conflicts that defined the British journalist. 

“I fear growing old, but then I also fear dying young,” she said. “I am most happy with a vodka martini in my hand, but I can’t stand the fact that the chatter in my head won’t go quiet until there is a quart of vodka inside me. I hate being in a war zone, but I also feel compelled, compelled, to see it for myself.” 

WATCH: ‘A Private War’ Examines War Correspondent’s Physical, Psychological Scars

Regarding Colvin’s heavy drinking, Pike said, “Should we even call it alcoholism? I really had to judge and walk a very fine line and find out where the truth lay, because it is not that we are defining her by a drinking problem. But she clearly had one.” 

Filmmaker Heineman described his deep connection to Colvin. A storyteller who took grave risks to document drug cartels and IS to the world, he wanted to do justice to the complexity of Colvin’s character and her courage as she unflinchingly reported from Homs, Syria, in 2012 during Bashar al-Assad’s heavy bombardment of the city. 

This is where Colvin lost her life. Through Colvin’s commitment, Heineman said he wanted to show the risks that journalists take to uncover the truth to the world. 

Power of storytelling

“Journalists are the bedrock of a free and independent society. You might not always agree with what they say, but the fact that journalism has been politicized, as our whole world has been politicized and our countries have been politicized and divided, is really sad to me,” the filmmaker said. “The fact that journalists have been demonized in this country, in other countries, the fact that a journalist was recently obviously killed, in Turkey [Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi], I think that’s one of the reasons why I make films. 

“I think film, journalism, storytelling has the ability to bring people together to create dialogue, to create two sides of a conversation,” he told VOA. 

As a documentarian, Heineman wanted to give this real-life texture to his film. In a scene where Colvin discovers a mass grave in Iraq, the local women and men gathered around mourning are real victims of war.  

“The women in that scene were Iraqi women crying about real trauma that they experienced, and at the end of that scene, like in any documentary that I made, something unforeseen happened: They started chanting and doing this prayer for the dead,” Heineman said. 

Pike related a similar experience she had while filming an unscripted scene with a refugee woman huddled with her kids in a safe house. The scene was depicting the siege of Homs. 

Through an interpreter, the woman told Pike how she fed her baby only sugar and water because she could not produce milk to breastfeed after the trauma of losing one of her kids to a bomb attack.  

“Then the woman said to me as Marie — and it was caught on camera — she said, ‘I don’t want this, please, I don’t want this just to be words on paper. I want the world to know that a generation is dying here. I want the world to know my story.’ ”  

Pike said that at that moment, she felt what drove Colvin — the journalist’s grave responsibility to bear witness to people’s suffering, no matter the cost.  
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From: MeNeedIt