Sofia Imber, who turned a garage into the Caracas Museum of Contemporary Art and became one of Venezuela’s most influential women journalists, died Monday in the capital. She was 92.

The former director of what was once among Latin America’s most important art galleries succumbed to complications due to old age, her biographer, Diego Arroyo Gil, told The Associated Press.

Imber’s television program Buenos Dias, which she hosted with her second husband from 1969 to 1993, was a landmark of Venezuelan journalism and politics. She became famous for her cutting interviews with global leaders such as former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Israel’s Simon Peres and the Dalai Lama, as well as with writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Social media was flooded by people lamenting her death. “Good journey, dear Sofia Imber. You gave us art, you gave us culture, you gave us an example of tireless work. That was your best piece,” humorist Eduardo Edo Sanabria said on Twitter.

In 1971, when Venezuelan authorities were looking for a place to display art, Imber famously said: “If you give me a garage, I will turn it into a museum.”

Three years after, she created a foundation to transform an auto parts garage into the first museum of modern art in Venezuela. In less than a decade, it had grown to hold pieces by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, Fernando Botero and many Venezuelan artists. At one point, it had more than 4,000 works and received more than 15,000 visitors a month.

Laid off by Chavez in 2001

Imber, a critic of the socialist government established by the late President Hugo Chavez, was laid off as the museum’s director by Chavez in 2001. She called her dismissal “one of the most painful moments” of her life.  

“The president forgot or did not want to recognize the courage and the dedication of this wonderful woman,” artist Jesus Soto told AP before his death in 2005.

Before being fired as museum director, she created a program to bring paintings and sculpture to suburbs and faraway places. In 1967, she became the first Latin American woman to win UNESCO’s Picasso Medal. She also received awards in Brazil, France, Chile, Colombia, Italy, Mexico and Spain.

“Sofia Imber took contemporary art to the most remote areas of the country,” Soto said.

Born in Soroca, Moldova, then in the former Soviet Union, she arrived in Venezuela in 1930 with her family. She later graduated from Central University of Venezuela.

Lived in Paris, Brussels

In 1944, she married Guillermo Meneses and they had four children. Meneses later held diplomatic posts in Paris and Brussels, where the couple met intellectuals and artists like Picasso, Andre Malraux and William Faulkner.

The couple divorced in 1964 and she later married journalist Carlos Rangel.

In a speech after being let go as director of the Caracas art museum, she said: “I want to be remembered as a worker and tireless woman.”
…

From: MeNeedIt

The Vatican and Rome’s Jewish Museum have announced an unprecedented event  — a joint exhibit focusing on the menorah, the candelabra that is the ancient symbol of Judaism.

The exhibit will open May 15 and run through July 23, and will be simultaneously held in St. Peter’s Square and in the museum in Rome’s main synagogue.

The displays will include pieces of artwork and other exhibits from around the world, centering on the importance of the menorah in both Jewish and Christian history and culture.

Officials say the highlight will be tracing the fate of the solid-gold menorah taken by the emperor Titus when Roman soldiers destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem in the year 70 A.D.

Although paintings show the emperor carrying the menorah, it is still unknown exactly what happened to it, and there are numerous accounts of its fate.

But many historians believe it was stolen when the Vandals raided and sacked Rome in 455.

A newly found stone from the Galilee synagogue dating to the first century A.D. will be another highlight of the exhibit.

Ties between the Roman Catholic Church and world Judaism have improved immensely since 1965 when the Vatican repudiated Jewish guilt for the death of Christ.
…

From: MeNeedIt

An agile thief nicknamed “Spiderman,” an antiques dealer and an art expert were sentenced to prison Monday and ordered to pay Paris for stealing five masterpieces from the city’s Modern Art Museum worth 104 million euros ($110 million.)

The paintings — by Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Braque and Fernand Leger — have not been seen since the dramatic 2010 heist.

The Paris court convicted “Spiderman” Vjeran Tomic of stealing the paintings and sentenced him to eight years in prison. Jean-Michel Corvez, the antiques dealer who orchestrated the theft, was sentenced to seven years.

Sentence ‘particularly severe’

Yonathan Birn, who stored the paintings and told the court he destroyed them out of fear of getting caught, screamed at the judge who sentenced him to six years in prison.

His lawyer, Caroline Toby, called Birn’s sentence “particularly severe.”

The court also jointly fined the men an eye-popping 104 million euros for the loss of the paintings, but the verdict did not detail how they might go about raising even a fraction of the fine.

Birn, a 40-year-old expert and dealer in luxury watches, previously told the court he threw the masterpieces in the trash and “made the worst mistake of my existence.”

Masterpieces smuggled out of France

Investigators think the paintings were smuggled out of France, although they were not able to prove that, court documents showed. Birn’s co-defendants testified he was “too smart” to destroy the masterpieces.

Tomic, a thief with 14 previous convictions, said before sentencing that he got a buzz from the May 20, 2010, overnight break-in. He took advantage of failures in the security, alarm and video-surveillance systems to move around the high-ceilinged museum near the Eiffel Tower.

“It’s quite spectacular. There is an adrenaline rush the moment you enter the space,” he said. “The sounds resonate from one side to the other.”

Authorities found climbing gear at his home: gloves, ropes, climbing shoes and suction cups. He removed the glass from a bay window without breaking it and cut the padlock of the metal grid behind it, allowing him to move from one room to another without raising the security alarm.

Tomic was there to steal a painting by Fernand Leger and possibly a Modigliani ordered by Corvez, the 61-year-old antiques dealer who confessed to being a receiver of stolen goods. Tomic said when he came across the Picasso, the Matisse and the Braque paintings, he decided to take them as well.

‘Totally stunned’

Several hours after the headline-making burglary, Tomic said he offered the five paintings to Corvez, who said he was “totally stunned” by them.

Corvez said he initially gave Tomic a plastic bag containing 40,000 euros ($43,000) in small denominations just for the Leger, because he was unsure he would get buyers for the other paintings.

Corvez then became worried about keeping the artworks in his shop after several months and showed them to his friend Birn, who agreed to buy the Modigliani for 80,000 euros ($86,000) and to store the others in his studio. The Modigliani was hidden in a bank safe, he said.

Birn said he panicked when police began investigating. He says one day in May 2011 he retrieved the Modigliani from the safe, returned to his workshop to break the stretcher bars on all the canvasses with fierce kicks and then threw them all into the building’s trash.
…

From: MeNeedIt

Greece will need less in emergency loans from international lenders than originally agreed in its third bailout program due to a better-than-expected budgetary developments, the head of the eurozone bailout fund was reported on Monday as saying.

Klaus Regling told German newspaper Bild that at the end of Greece’s money-for-reforms package in August 2018, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) will “probably have paid out far less than the agreed maximum amount of 86 billion euros” because the Greek budget was developing better than expected.

The comments came shortly before eurozone finance ministers will meet in Brussels to assess Greece’s progress in fulfilling the conditions of its bailout.

Bavarian Finance Minister Markus Soeder called for a tougher stance in negotiations with Greece, suggesting Athens should only get fresh aid from its lenders against additional collateral such as cash, gold or real estate.

“We need a plan B,” Soeder told Bild newspaper.

The review of the Greek bailout program has been beset by delays and disputes between Athens and its European Union and International Monetary Fund creditors. As disagreement has arisen over Greece’s fiscal targets, debt relief and promised reforms, fears have grown that Europe could face a new financial crisis.

Greece has said it cannot cut pensions any further as demanded by the International Monetary Fund while some of its European lenders, led by Germany, have rejected the IMF’s demand to grant it debt relief of some sort – perhaps on payments and maturity – now.

The Fund has insisted on debt relief and precautionary fiscal measures to ensure that Athens can meet its fiscal targets before it will consider participating in the bailout.

The German government, gearing up for election in September, opposes debt relief for Greece as demanded by the IMF, and says the current program can only continue if the Fund joins in.

The IMF’s participation remains unclear and this question is likely to be one of the main talking points when German Chancellor Angela Merkel and IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde meet on Wednesday.

The IMF declined to comment on a German magazine report on Friday that it was likely to contribute up to 5 billion euros ($5.3 billion) to a third bailout package for Greece, saying its views on the deal had not shifted.

The German magazine Der Spiegel said in an unsourced report that European lenders were now expecting the IMF to contribute a sum of this size after first having hoped for 16 billion euros.
…

From: MeNeedIt

SpaceX has successfully launched its unmanned Falcon 9 cargo rocket from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The cargo rocket is taking food and other provisions to astronauts on the International Space Station. It is the 10th of 20 cargo missions contracted out to SpaceX by NASA.

WATCH: SpaceX Dragon Rocket Launch

This is SpaceX’s first successful launch in Florida since one of the company’s rockets exploded there in September 2016. The launch pad was last used for NASA’s final space shuttle mission nearly six years ago.

On January 18, SpaceX successfully launched one of the Falcon 9 rockets from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California.
…

From: MeNeedIt

The International Monetary Fund said Sunday that it and other partners have agreed on terms for a more than $5 billion loan package to the Mongolian government to help get the north Asian country’s economy back on track. 

The deal is subject to approval by the IMF’s executive board, which is expected to consider Mongolia’s request in March.

According to the terms agreed by the Mongolian government and IMF envoys, the IMF would provide $440 million over three years. The Asian Development Bank, World Bank, Japan and South Korea are together expected to provide up to $3 billion, and the People’s Bank of China is expected to extend its 15 billion RMB ($2 billion) swap line with the Bank of Mongolia for at least another three years, the IMF statement said. 

The economy of mineral-rich Mongolia has been hit hard in recent years by a sharp decline in commodity prices and a collapse in foreign direct investment. 

Adding to Mongolia’s woes is an exceptionally cold winter for the second successive year, which the Red Cross warned last week was putting the livelihoods of more than 150,000 nomadic herders and family members at risk. 

Mongolia’s national debt now stands around $23 billion, or twice the annual economic output, and a $580 million payment to foreign bondholders is due March 21.

The IMF statement said the loan agreement would mean Mongolia has to strengthen its banking system and adopt fiscal reforms to ensure that budget discipline is maintained. 

Generally, terms required by the IMF as a condition for such lending often prompt complaints in borrower countries that the conditions hurt the poor or undercut economic growth by reducing social spending or investment in public facilities. 
…

From: MeNeedIt

A paranoid dictator’s estranged brother. Two young female assassins. A crowded international airport. And a mysterious poison that kills within hours. 

It’s the perfect recipe for a thrilling cloak-and-dagger spy novel. Except some, or possibly even all, of this tale could be true in the apparent assassination of Kim Jong Nam, the older half brother of reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. And just like similar intriguing cases from the past, the public is hanging on every detail because there’s just something about murder by poison that captivates. 

“A gun announces its mischief; poison can sneak in with a sip of champagne,” said Robert Thompson, a pop culture expert at Syracuse University. “The question isn’t why we are fascinated with this latest story, it’s why wouldn’t we be?”

Still, speculation that Kim Jong Nam was killed by two young female “agents” at the busy Kuala Lumpur airport last week left even the most seasoned toxicology sleuths shaking their heads. Add in that the portly sibling was apparently sprayed in the face with a substance so potent it killed him before he could reach the hospital, and you’ve got a scene straight out of a James Bond movie. 

Four people, including the two women — one Indonesian and the other traveling on a Vietnamese passport — have been detained. 

The Indonesian told authorities she thought she was participating in a comedy show prank. 

Theories and speculation

Conspiracy theories and speculation abound as police scramble to unravel what really happened to Kim Jong Nam, age 45 or 46, the son of late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and a mistress. After falling out of favor with the family, the son lived for years in exile and was about to catch a flight to Macau when the attack took place. He sought help at the airport clinic after suddenly falling ill and died en route to the hospital. Autopsy results have not been released.

If a chemical agent really was to blame, finding it may be the hardest part of all. Tissue and fluid samples may need to be sent abroad for analysis at a facility with greater capabilities, such as in Japan or at the FBI’s crime lab, if Malaysian experts cannot pinpoint the cause of death.

“The more unusual, the more potent, the more volatile a poison is, the less likely it is to be detected,” said Olif Drummer, a toxicologist at Australia’s Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine who has spent 40 years in the field.

Such a poison not easy to make, experts say 

Experts routinely tasked with finding answers in poisoning cases say the events at Kuala Lumpur’s airline terminal are bizarre, but not impossible. 

They wonder: What substance could have been used to kill the victim so quickly without sickening the women who apparently deployed it, along with anyone else nearby? Difficult, they say, but doable. 

“It’s not an agent that could be cooked up in a hotel room. It’s going to take a lot of knowledge regarding the chemical in order to facilitate an attack like this,” said Bruce Goldberger, a leading toxicologist who heads the forensic medicine division at the University of Florida. 

He said a nerve gas or ricin, a deadly substance found in castor beans, could be possible. A strong opioid compound could also have been used, though that would likely have incapacitated the victim immediately. 

“It would have to be cleverly designed in order to be applied in this fashion without hurting anyone else,” Goldberger said.

Poison more common than thought 

History is filled with poisoners. From jilted lovers seeking revenge to greedy spouses looking to collect on life insurance policies. Arsenic, cyanide and strychnine are often the toxins of choice used in murders, but political hits are usually a much more complicated business. 

“To me, murder by poison is the easiest thing to get away with,” said John Trestrail, a forensic toxicologist who has examined more than 1,000 poisoning crimes. “If all those people in the cemetery who have been poisoned could raise their hands, we’d probably be shocked.”

While murder using toxins is far less common than stabbings and shootings, he said his research shows that poisoners often strike more than once. 

“These people get away with it time and time again until somebody says, `Well, hell, she’s had four husbands and they all died suddenly,”’ Trestrail said. “Then the exhumations come and: Bingo!” 
…

From: MeNeedIt

Dry Tortugas is a chain of small islands about 113 kilometers (70 miles) west of Key West, Florida, in the Gulf of Mexico. To get there, national parks traveler Mikah Meyer took a sea plane from the southernmost city in the continental United States.

Dry Tortugas National Park

Part of the National Park Service, the 259 square-kilometer (100 square-mile) park is mostly open water with seven small islands, home to beautiful coral reefs, a vast assortment of bird and marine life, and a magnificent 19th-century fort.

Watch video report:

Mikah, who’s on a mission to visit all of the more than 400 NPS sites, says the journey to the remote islands was as much fun as his destination.

Picturesque journey

“It was really cool as we took off from Key West, first to be able to see the city of Key West … then to see all these really interesting different shades of blue.”

Flying over the shallow waters, Mikah also had an opportunity to spot a variety of wildlife.

“Our pilot told us in a lot of places it’s just 4 to 6 feet (1 to 2 meters), and so this makes it really great as you’re flying over because I saw sea turtles, I saw the shadow of a giant shark, and sometimes you can see dolphins.”

Dry Tortugas derives its name from the Spanish word for turtles, which the park is famous for. Hundreds of the endangered reptiles annually nest in the area. Its underwater treasures also include beautiful coral reefs and an abundance of marine life.

Fort Jefferson

Another popular feature of the islands is Fort Jefferson, a massive but unfinished coastal fortress built in 1847. Made with millions of bricks, it’s one of the most ambitious and extensive fortifications constructed in the United States. “It’s massive in size,” Mikah said. “Way bigger than most of the others I’d been to.”

The fort was never completed because during the 30 years it was under construction, advancements in rifled artillery developed and used during the Civil War meant that the unreinforced masonry walls wouldn’t stand up to a prolonged bombardment.

But even though it was never attacked, Fort Jefferson fulfilled its intended role: to protect the peace and prosperity of a young nation, through deterrence.

It was used as a military prison during the Civil War, mainly for Union deserters. And the conspirators who were involved in President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination were also held there.

Jailbird dreams

Its most famous prisoner was Dr. Samuel Mudd, the physician who set the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s assassin. Mikah relived a little history by walking into a space that was once the physician’s jail cell.

Mikah says the tour guide told him Mudd tried to escape once. “They made the prisoners do manual labor and he tried to sneak out on a boat.” But the prison environment was similar to the former Alcatraz prison off San Francisco, California, he explained, which is also surrounded by water. “Can you imagine being a prisoner and you’re 70 miles away across shark-infested waters from the closest town?”

Mikah said he felt lucky to be able to visit a remote area of the U.S. rich with history, and man-made as well as natural treasures.

“It’s another example of how the park service has multiple island locations that skirt the continent that you can really experience a wide array of sights when you go to the national parks.”

Mikah invites you to follow him on his website, Facebook and Instagram.
…

From: MeNeedIt

SpaceX halted the planned launch Saturday of its unmanned Falcon 9 cargo rocket with just 13 seconds left on the countdown clock because of a technical issue.

The company said on Twitter it was “standing down to take a closer look at positioning of the second stage engine nozzle.” The earliest time SpaceX can reschedule the launch is about 9:30 a.m. EST Sunday, the company said.

The weather expected in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Sunday would be favorable for the launch.

A spokesman for SpaceX told AFP that engineers found a small helium leak in the second-stage thrust control of the rocket’s engine. The launch was delayed “out of an abundance of caution,” the spokesman said.

Elon Musk, chief executive officer at SpaceX, called the malfunction “slightly odd” and said the rocket would fly fine if this was the only issue. But SpaceX needs to “make sure that it isn’t symptomatic of a more significant upstream root cause,” he added.

The cargo rocket scheduled to launch Saturday was supposed to take food and other provisions to astronauts on the International Space Station. It is the 10th of 20 cargo missions contracted out to SpaceX by NASA.

If it goes off as planned, it will be SpaceX’s first successful launch in Florida since one of the company’s rockets exploded there in September 2016. On January 18, SpaceX successfully launched one of the Falcon 9 rockets from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California.
…

From: MeNeedIt

A career of heading a soccer ball may raise the risk of dementia, according to a small new study.

Six longtime soccer players who died with dementia were found to have brain injuries from repetitive trauma.

The injuries are the same kind found in American football players, boxers and soldiers hit by explosions. They include a condition known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, which is linked to declining mental function and mood disorders.

WATCH: Soccer May Pose Risk of Repetitive Brain Injury

While concussions are relatively rare in soccer — the port the rest of the world knows as football — players regularly hit the ball with their heads. That’s on top of the collisions common in any contact sport.

“The key thing in (soccer) is, players are exposed to lower impact but very high number of blows to the head,” says neurology professor Helen Ling at University College, London, lead author of the new study.

Cheese wires

Injury happens because the human brain has the consistency of a firm pudding, “but your blood vessels are just a little bit tougher,” says Ling’s colleague in London, neuroscience professor John Hardy. “And so, if you do a rapid rotation, they act like little cheese wires and do bits of damage around them.”

But how serious that damage is in soccer players is unclear. Ling says there have only been a few studies, using brain scans or blood tests, and the results have been contradictory.

Examining a patient’s brain under a microscope can provide definitive evidence, but that has to wait until the patient dies.

One of the study authors has been treating retired soccer players with dementia since 1980. Six of them donated their brains for research when they died.

In the new study, in the journal Acta Neuropathologica, all six brains showed signs of damage, and four had CTE.

“We’re becoming increasingly aware that the risk is higher than we thought,” says Thor Stein, a neuropathologist at Boston University and the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, who was not involved with this study.

What’s the risk?

But it’s still early, he cautions.

“Soccer is even further behind than American football in terms of trying to figure out what is the risk. We don’t know. We can’t answer that with this kind of study.”

While many American parents are reconsidering letting their children play football, the authors don’t recommend pulling kids off the soccer field.

The health and social benefits of playing sports are well established. And, Hardy adds, these six patients played soccer “probably every day of their lives for 25 to 30 years, probably many hours a day. This is very different from a casual, weekend player or a school player. It’s just a different order of magnitude of contact.”

Ling hopes the study will spark more research, starting with figuring out how common dementia is among football players as they age.

British soccer associations have pledged to back more studies on the subject.
…

From: MeNeedIt

In a Mexican cave system so beautiful and hot that it is called both a fairyland and hell, scientists have discovered life trapped in crystals that could be 50,000 years old.

The bizarre and ancient microbes were found dormant in caves in Naica, Mexico, and were able to exist by living on minerals such as iron and manganese, said Penelope Boston, head of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute.

“It’s super life,” said Boston, who presented the discovery Friday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Boston.

If confirmed, the find is yet another example of how microbes can survive in extremely punishing conditions on Earth.

Though it was presented at a science conference and was the result of nine years of work, the findings have yet to be published in a scientific journal and haven’t been peer reviewed. Boston planned more genetic tests for the microbes she revived both in the lab and on site. 

40 strains of microbes, viruses 

The life forms — 40 different strains of microbes and some viruses — are so weird that their nearest relatives are 10 percent different genetically. That makes their closest relative about as far away as humans are from mushrooms, Boston said.

The Naica caves — an abandoned lead and zinc mine — are half a mile (800 meters) deep. Before drilling occurred by a mine company, the mines had been completely cut off from the outside world. Some were as vast as cathedrals, with crystals lining the iron walls. They were also so hot that scientists had to don cheap versions of space suits — to prevent contamination with outside life — and wore ice packs all over their bodies. 

Boston said the team could only work about 20 minutes at a time before ducking to a “cool” room that was about 100 degrees (38 Celsius).

No surprise in extreme life 

NASA wouldn’t allow Boston to share her work for outside review before Friday’s announcement, so scientists couldn’t say much. But University of South Florida biologist Norine Noonan, who wasn’t part of the study but was on a panel where Boston presented her work, said it made sense.

“Why are we surprised?” Noonan said. “As a biologist I would say life on Earth is extremely tough and extremely versatile.”

This isn’t the oldest extreme life. Several years ago, a different group of scientists published studies about microbes that may be half a million years old and still alive. Those were trapped in ice and salt, which isn’t quite the same as rock or crystal, Boston said.

The age of the Naica microbes was determined by outside experts who looked at where the microbes were located in the crystals and how fast those crystals grow. 

It’s not the only weird life Boston is examining. She is also studying microbes commonly found in caves in the United States, Ukraine and elsewhere that eat copper sulfate and seem to be close to indestructible. 

“It’s simply another illustration of just how completely tough Earth life is,” Boston said.
…

From: MeNeedIt

President Donald Trump says the U.S. military might buy Boeing fighter planes rather than those of rival Lockheed, which he has called overpriced. As VOA’s Jim Randle reports, the president spoke Friday at a Boeing factory in South Carolina as the company showed off the newest version of its 787 commercial jetliner.
…

From: MeNeedIt