Yixuan Hao swirls the sparkling red in her glass and dips nearer to sniff. Throughout this frigid afternoon, she has been smelling and tasting wines from sunnier climates: Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, California. Perhaps soon, sooner than many people think, students like herself learning the wine trade here in Burgundy, will be sipping vintages from another New World upstart: China.

“It’s like a learning curve,” says Hao, 23, who comes from Xinjiang province, China’s biggest producer of wine grapes. “You need to learn from others who know better. But we’re trying to develop our own style, rather than copy the Bordeaux and the Burgundies.”

Welcome to the School of Wine and Spirits Business in Dijon, part of the Burgundy School of Business, where nearly one-third of the student body is from China. The nation that now dominates manufacturing of products ranging from wind turbines to smart phones is now turning its sights on oenology, and grooming a new generation to master it.

That includes here in France’s storied Burgundy winemaking region, where a patchwork of tiny vineyards, ancient villages and rolling hills have for centuries cultivated a particularly fierce love of terroir. The elusive term, capturing a particular land, climate and soil that helps define the identity of every wine, earned Burgundy a 2015 listing as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

“They want to go back home with the best practices so they can produce the best wines they can,” says Director Jerome Gallo of students like Hao. “Probably not in one century, but in a decade or two, Chinese, some of them alumna, will be able to produce quality wines on a large scale.”

The school’s one-year master’s program teaches the fundamentals of the wine trade, from finance and management, to marketing, sales and negotiation. Many students are encouraged to take internships in France or overseas, including in their native countries. And despite tuition that can reach more than $15,000, there is no lack of Chinese applicants.

“Most of them go back to China after the program,” Gallo says. “Because it’s their home country and because there are a lot of things to develop there.”

Learning the trade

During an afternoon class on New World wines, students assessed the flavors and intensity of a parade of vintages, swirling and rising glasses, and puckering their cheeks as they tasted.

“You can smell blackberry, apple, orange,” says 21-year-old Lei Shi from northern China. “It’s magic.”

Shi hopes to land a job as an international wine buyer for a Chinese company after he graduates. But he is keenly aware that the other part of the equation, developing wine knowledge among consumers back home, remains a challenge.

“The wine culture in China is not very good,” he says. “Most people don’t know how to taste and enjoy wine. So we still have a long way to go.”

Yet the raw ingredients are there. China has the world’s second largest acreage in planted vineyards, behind Spain but ahead of France. While most of the cultivation is for table grapes, the domestic wine industry is growing rapidly.

Indeed, by 2020, China is expected to become the world’s second-biggest wine market, after the United States, according to International Wine and Spirit Research.

While the vast majority of wine consumed is domestically produced, faux Italian- and French-style chateaux are sprouting across the country, and a vast wine theme park opened this year in southeastern China, China is turning into a major wine importer.

“The new generation is more open to French culture and French wines than the old generation,” said student Hao. “Middle and upper classes want to consume wines from different regions, like Italy. For them, it’s a symbol of wealth and luxury.”

At La Route des Vins wine store, tucked in the ancient, cobblestoned streets of central Dijon, Adrien Tirelli describes Chinese visitors, like the Americans before them, arriving with guide books on what to buy.

“They tell me ‘I want this, this and this one, only the grand cru, only the best, only the most expensive,’” he recounts. “My job is to share my passion, and maybe suggest a lesser wine so they can develop their palates first.”

Buying French chateaux

Chinese are also snapping up French chateaux, mostly less expensive and prestigious ones, as promising investments. The favored target is the southwestern French region of Bordeaux, where more than 100 have been purchased in recent years, fueling fears among some of a Chinese invasion, even though the sales account for a tiny percentage of Bordeaux’s vineyards.

Burgundy, in east-central France, is also associated with luxury wines, but the region’s myriad vineyards and labels are a more difficult sell.

So far, only two Burgundy properties are in Chinese hands, according to Liu Yan, a local wine expert and Chinese tour guide based in the nearby wine city of Beaune.

One is Gevrey-Chambertin, a village in Burgundy’s celebrated Cote de Nuits wine region. When Hong Kong businessman Louis Ng bought a dilapidated chateau with two hectares of vines for a reported eight million euros (about $10 million) in 2012, he sparked local uproar. A group of locals banded together with an unsuccessful counteroffer, fearing a dilution of their patrimony.

But others applauded the sale, including Gevrey-Chambertin’s mayor, who noted no public funds were available to restore the ruin. The local tourist office took advantage of the media attention around the controversy to begin selling T-shirts proclaiming “In Pinot Noir We Trust,” Le Monde newspaper reported.

But tour guide Yan understands the local fears. She arrived in Burgundy more than a decade ago, studying wine in nearby Beaune. Unlike other Chinese students, she stayed.

“I love Burgundy, the simplicity of the people who are passionate about their work,” she says. “And especially this love of the land, people don’t want to lose it.”

Yan is confident her native China will someday be another major wine heavyweight. But it cannot compete with Burgundy.

“Every wine represents a terroir,” she says. “The land isn’t the same. The environment, the earth, all that doesn’t produce the same kind of wine.”
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From: MeNeedIt

A rare painting by Albert Namatjira, one of Australia’s most iconic Aboriginal artists, is to be sold to raise money for kidney patients in remote parts of central Australia. Indigenous people suffer kidney disease at 15 times the national average.

Albert Namatjira was a trailblazer. Born in 1902 near Alice Springs in Australia’s rugged Northern Territory, he did not start painting seriously until he was 32-years old.

His Western-inspired watercolors were a radical departure from traditional Indigenous art’s symbols and design, and he became a household name in Australia. The renowned Aboriginal artist was even featured on an Australian postage stamp in the late 1960s.

His famous painting, called “Mount Hermannsburg”, is considered to be one of the most valuable examples of his work. It has been donated by an Aboriginal group to a renal center in Alice Springs to raise money to help indigenous patients receive treatment nearer to home rather than travel hundreds of kilometers.

Sarah Brown, the head of The Purple House, the kidney unit that has been given the Namatjira painting, says it is an incredible gesture.

“So I got a phone call saying ‘hey Sarah, the Ngurratjuta [Aboriginal Corporation] board has met, we would like you to come to the Araluen Arts Center [in Alice Springs] and choose an Albert Namatjira painting.’ And I thought I am never going to have a phone call like that ever again. Central Australia is really the center of the universe for kidney failure, there is well over 350 people in Central Australia who need dialysis, which is usually hemodialysis, which is three days a week, five-hours a session,” said Brown.

Namatjira’s ‘Mount Hermannsburg’ painting is expected to fetch about $75,000 at auction.

The painter died in 1959 at the age of 57.

Australia’s Aboriginal people are by far the country’s most disadvantaged group, suffering high rates of ill health, poverty, imprisonment and unemployment. They make up about 3 per cent of Australia’s population of almost 25 million people.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

The newest way to bet on bitcoin, the cyptocurrency that has taken Wall Street by storm with its stratospheric price rise and wild daily gyrations, will arrive Sunday when bitcoin futures start trading.

The launch has given an extra kick to the cyptocurrency’s scorching run this year. It has nearly doubled in price since the start of December, but recent days saw sharp moves in both directions, with bitcoin losing almost a fifth of its value Friday after surging more than 40 percent in the previous 48 hours.

But while some market participants are excited about a regulated way to bet on or hedge against moves in bitcoin, others caution that risks remain for investors and possibly even the clearing organizations underpinning the trades.

The futures are cash-settled contracts based on the auction price of bitcoin in U.S. dollars on the Gemini Exchange, owned and operated by virtual currency entrepreneurs Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.

A regulated bitcoin product

“The pretty sharp rise we have seen in bitcoin in just the last couple of weeks has probably been driven by optimism ahead of the futures launch,” said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab in Austin.

Bitcoin fans appear excited about the prospect of an exchange-listed and regulated product and the ability to bet on its price swings without having to sign up for a digital wallet.

The futures are an alternative to a largely unregulated spot market underpinned by cryptocurrency exchanges that have been plagued by cybersecurity and fraud issues.

“You are going to open up the market to a whole lot of people who aren’t currently in bitcoin,” Frederick said.

Mixed reception in US

The futures launch has so far received a mixed reception from big U.S. banks and brokerages.

Interactive Brokers plans to offer its customers access to the first bitcoin futures when trading goes live, but bars clients from assuming short positions and has margin requirements of at least 50 percent.

Several online brokerages including Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade will not allow the trading of the newly launched futures.

Some of the big U.S. banks including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, will not immediately clear bitcoin trades for clients, the Financial Times reported on Friday.
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From: MeNeedIt

A sculptor who produced the image of Queen Elizabeth used on Britain’s coins has been chosen to create a new statue of Princess Diana, the office of Princes William and Harry said Sunday, to commemorate 20 years since her death.

Ian Rank-Broadley, whose effigy of the Queen has appeared on all UK and Commonwealth coinage since 1998, will design the statue, which will not be unveiled until 2019.

“Ian is an extremely gifted sculptor and we know that he will create a fitting and lasting tribute to our mother,” Prince William and his younger brother, Harry, said in a statement.

In January, the brothers commissioned a statue in honor of their mother, who died in a Paris car crash 20 years ago, to be erected outside their official London home Kensington Palace.

Diana, the first wife of the heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles, was killed when the limousine carrying her and her lover Dodi al-Fayed crashed in a Paris tunnel in August 1997.

William was 15 and Harry was 12 at the time.

“We have been touched by the kind words and memories so many people have shared about our mother over these past few months,” the brothers said. “It is clear the significance of her work is still felt by many in the UK and across the world, even 20 years after her death.”

It had been hoped that the statue would be unveiled before the end of the year to mark the anniversary, but Kensington Palace said that it was now envisaged that the statue would be unveiled in 2019.

The first permanent memorial to her, a 210-meter (689-foot) long fountain was unveiled in Hyde Park in 2004 after years of bureaucratic wrangling and squabbling over the design.
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From: MeNeedIt

If God were a stonemason … Utah’s Arches National Park would be the back room of his workshop. The Arches National Park, established almost a century ago, is now one of the most popular destinations for Americans and tourists from around the world. The park has more than 2,000 natural stone arches, in addition to hundreds of soaring pinnacles, massive fins and giant balanced rocks. VOA’s Alex Yanevskyy had a chance to take in these majestic wonders.
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From: MeNeedIt

Many scientists believe the Arctic, one of the fastest-changing places on the planet, could drive change in other parts of the world, including wildfire-ravaged Southern California.

In a recent NASA mission called Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG), climate scientist Josh Willis embarked on a journey to study ice in Greenland and surrounding oceans and how much oceans are eating away at the ice around the edges of the ice sheet. The data collected included the ocean’s temperature and salinity, and the shape and depth of the sea floor.

“The shape of the sea floor determines how much the warm water can reach in and touch the glaciers,” said Willis, who works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles.

“Warm water is widespread across the Greenland shelf, and it is very much a major threat to the glaciers,” Willis said. “The thing we really don’t know is how fast is Greenland’s ice going to disappear.

“If it takes a thousand years or two thousand years, then we can probably adapt. But if it happens in a few hundred, we should already be evacuating cities around the world,” he added.

Impact of sea ice

A separate study from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory suggests a link between sea ice melting in the Arctic and drier conditions in California. A new simulation that only looks at sea ice in the next two decades, shows a pressure ridge pushing the winter air masses north into Alaska and Canada, which impacts California.

“We saw quite substantial drying of California so with (looking at) the sea ice alone, we saw 10 to 15 percent decrease in precipitation over a 20-year period,” said Ivana Cvijanovic, an atmospheric scientist and post-doctoral researcher at the national laboratory.

Other factors such as greenhouse gases and particulate pollution can also affect the future of rainfall in California. The modeling framework used in the study at Lawrence Livermore helps scientists understand the impact of sea ice in isolation to these other factors.

“Ice is disappearing on the Arctic Ocean. It’s disappearing from Greenland and this is reshaping climate patterns all across the planet,” Willis said.

He and other scientists predict that as Arctic regions warm, the American Southwest will feel the impact.

“We will probably see drier conditions in the long run in the second half of the [21st] century in the Southwest and that means we’re going to struggle with water needs and also fire,” Willis said.

Intersection of wildland, people

Dry conditions plus a growing population and urban sprawl equals more wildfires and costly devastation, such as the ones in Southern California.

“We are in Southern California and a lot of the fires we find that happen right where people intersect with wildland happen because of people,” said Natasha Stavros, an applied science system engineer and fire expert at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

As the weather evolves and more wildfires burn, Stavros expects other environmental changes.

“As we experience climate changes and things become hotter and dryer, fire acts kind of like an eraser. It erases the landscape and it actually allows new ecosystems to establish because they don’t have to compete with what was there,” Stavros said.

The American Southwest is not the only place where change is predicted.

“As the atmosphere heats up, it becomes a better pipe for carrying water for picking it up from one place and dumping it in another,” Willis said. “This means that dry places are more likely to get drier and wet places are likely to get wetter. It also means that bigger more torrential downpours become more likely.”
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From: MeNeedIt

A new report from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory predicts a link between sea ice melting in the Arctic and drier conditions in California over the next several decades. This finding comes at a time when several wildfires are raging across Southern California. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports on the work of scientists as they look at the global implications of the melting of glaciers and sea ice, and other impacts a changing climate could have around the world.
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From: MeNeedIt

A new exhibition aims to show how the art world has responded to the global changes since the terror attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Age of Terror: Art since 9/11 at London’s Imperial War Museum brings together 40 artists from across the world whose works reflect on conflict and society since that day. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

The U.S. economy posted another impressive month, adding 228,000 jobs in November. The unemployment rate, now at a 17-year low, remains unchanged at 4.1 percent. But even as more Americans returned to the workforce, job recruiters say the job market is changing and both employers and employees need to be prepared. Mil Arcega reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

The environmental group EcoWatch estimates that at least 1 million sea birds, and 100,000 marine mammals are killed every year by ingesting plastic or getting caught in it. It is an environmental nightmare, and it’s getting worse every year. But this week, more than 200 countries signed an agreement to begin dealing with the problem. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

Last month, U.S. Catholic bishops voted unanimously to pursue sainthood for Oglala Lakota healer and visionary Nicholas Black Elk, who is credited with bringing hundreds of Native Americans to the Catholic faith. It is the realization of a dream for Catholic Lakota on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, among them, some of Black Elk’s descendants.

But not everyone one supports the move, mindful of the Church’s role in the historic suppression of indigenous cultures.

Background

Most of what is known about Black Elk is derived from an autobiography dictated to writer John Neihart in 1932, “Black Elk Speaks.”

He was born in present-day Wyoming in December, 1863, according to the Lakota calendar, and given the name of Hehaka Sapa, literally, “Black Elk.”

Black Elk grew up during the period of American settler expansion into the West and the U.S. government’s forced removal of Native Americans onto reservations. During this time, missionaries from various Christian denominations flocked to reservations in order to “save” Native souls. Catholic priests of the Jesuit order — called “black robes” by Lakota — established a mission at Pine Ridge.

Black Elk’s childhood was punctuated by religious visions which led him to later serve as a wichasha wakan, a traditional healer and spiritual leader. Black Elk announced his vocation in 1881, but after the U.S. government banned many Native American religious practices, he was forced to go underground.

“The Jesuits could tolerate Lakota spirituality and practice, but they did not like the healing ceremonies,” said Damian M. Costello, author of Black Elk: Colonialism and Lakota Catholicism. “They saw them as calling in spirits in an inappropriate way.”

In 1904, Costello explained, a Jesuit priest angrily interrupted Black Elk while he was performing a healing ceremony.

“In the aftermath of that, Black Elk was invited to Holy Rosary Mission, and he stayed there, learned about the faith and was eventually baptized,” he said.

Black Elk took the Christian name of Nicholas, after the 4th century healer, St. Nicholas. For the next 40 years, he served as a Church catechist, or lay cleric, and is said to have brought more than 400 Native Americans to the Catholic faith.

The road to sainthood

The movement to have him declared a saint began in March 2016, when some of Black Elk’s descendants presented a formal petition to Rapid City, South Dakota, Bishop Robert D. Gruss.

Gruss formally opened the case for sainthood on October 21 during a Mass at Pine Ridge’s Holy Rosary Church.

“Our task now is to continue to gather more information, testimony about his life, and to pray that he is found worthy to have his cause moved forward,” Gruss said.

The canonization process involves three steps: First is the declaration of a person’s heroic virtues, after which the church declares the person “venerable.” Second is beatification, after which the person is called “blessed.” Third is canonization, sainthood.

Petitioners must show evidence of two miracles occurring before and after beautification.

Bill White, a Lakota Catholic, will serve as the postulator for Black Elk’s cause. His job is to gather evidence to present to Rome.

“I believe God spoke to Black Elk at a very early age, and it isn’t likely that this was a message that just came from his village,” White said. “The message that we must all live in peace and harmony, it was such a Christian concept that it had to have come from God Himself, and it actually informed him and gave him direction for the rest of his life.”

Debating conversion

The nature of Black Elk’s conversion, however, is still debated by some scholars: Did the traditional healer become a Catholic out of true conviction or did he simply give in to pressure?

His great-granddaughter, Lakota activist Charlotte Black Elk, has been critical of the Church.

“There are varying types of genocide,” she told C-Span in a 2001 interview. “There’s the genocide where you outright kill people. There’s the genocide where you deny them identity through religious expression, through theology.”

She believes Black Elk converted because it was politically expedient.

“In those days, we weren’t allowed to travel without permission,” she told VOA. “But as a catechist, Black Elk could go everywhere and conduct traditional ceremonies.”

She said she does not support the idea of the Catholic Church claiming her ancestor as a saint, “but I do respect those who do,” she said. “And I will live well together with all my relatives.”

White is aware that not everyone supports the cause, but rejects their criticism.

“For over four decades, he was a catechist. He brought in hundreds of converts. Is this something you do just for a meal ticket, just to be able to travel freely?”

That said, he issued an invitation to skeptics: “I would invite them to give me some evidence. In my job as postulator, I would want to hear evidence to the contrary of what I feel and what I believe.”

The final decision will lie in the hands of Pope Francis, who has been vocal in his support of indigenous rights.

If confirmed, Black Elk would be the second Native American to receive the Church’s highest honor. The first was Kateri Tekakwitha, a 17th century Mohawk, canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012.
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From: MeNeedIt

Rising seas driven by climate change are threatening coastal cities around the world. The Southern U.S. city of Miami is already feeling the effects. Every autumn, when tides are at their highest, residents contend with flooded streets. Now, scientists are turning citizens into scientists to help them understand the impacts. VOA’s Steve Baragona spent time with volunteers splashing in puddles for science.
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From: MeNeedIt