All,
I have little left to say this year other than to wish all to have bothered to read here a very happy festive season and a safe and healthy 2025!
I am looking forward to a rest for a few weeks and. at this stage, plan to start blogging again in late January, 2025 when people are back from the holidays!
See you then and warmest best wishes to you all for 2025!
David.
This is just a sickening saga
Crowds in Damascus have celebrated the legacy of Mazen al-Hamada, the face of the country’s uprising, whose tortured body was found this week.
Adrian Blomfield
Dec 13, 2024 – 10.40am
Few could bear to look long at his face, with its sunken, sorrowful eyes so full of pain – but when Mazen al-Hamada spoke, you could not help but listen.
He spoke to audiences across the West, in lecture theatres and parliaments, bearing witness to the darkness of the Assad regime in low, urgent tones.
Sometimes, he showed them his wrists, scarred by the chains from which he hung until he lost consciousness. He would speak of the beatings and the rapes he and others suffered, his haunted eyes reddening at the memory.
On Thursday (Friday AEDT), they laid Hamada to rest in central Damascus, the capital coming to a halt as its residents gathered to honour the man who became the embodiment of a nation’s suffering and who now had become as powerful a symbol in death as he was in life.
Hamada was one of the last casualties of the 13-year uprising against Bashar al-Assad, tortured to death by a vindictive regime in its death throes just hours before the advancing rebels flung open the doors of the infamous Sednaya prison where he was held.
Having escaped for Europe in 2014 after his first incarceration, Hamada returned home six years later, fearing his crusade was having little impact, worried about his family’s wellbeing and relieved to have received assurances he would not be detained again.
Instead, he was arrested at Damascus airport immediately after his plane landed and never seen again until, on Tuesday, just two days after Assad’s fall, the city’s new masters discovered his body among 35 corpses wrapped in bloodied sheets at a military hospital in the Harasta district.
Tens of thousands were tortured to death by the Assad regime over the course of the rebellion. Hamada was quite possibly the last of them, killed, so activists hypothesise, to prevent him testifying against Sednaya’s torturers.
Muhammad Jafran’s forensic medical team at Damascus hospital examined all 35 bodies and concluded that only two, Hamada’s and another, had external injuries. The others, all believed to have been inmates at Sednaya, died either of starvation or asphyxia, most likely after suffocating in its overcrowded cells.
But what shocked Jafran was the scale of the injuries to Hamada’s body and that they had clearly been inflicted over several days. It is probable, the doctors concluded, that he died on Friday, less than 48 hours before Assad fled the country.
“He had so many fractures,” Jafran said. “There were injuries to his entire body, with heavy bruising on the femurs and abdomen. We don’t know which was the injury that killed him. We do know he suffered.”
From the morgue at the hospital, through the streets of Damascus to the Hejaz railway station, the crowd carried his coffin, chanting his name, lauding his courage and regretting how poignantly close he had come to rescue.
Yet it was not just Hamada’s picture the crowds held aloft. There were dozens of others, too, each showing the image of another of Assad’s victims who disappeared over his 24-year rule never to be seen again, buried, most likely, in unknown, unmarked graves across Syria.
Fittingly, the man who in life championed the cause of all Syria’s 100,000 or more political prisoners had become the symbol of far more deaths than just his own.
Nor was it just those with missing relatives who joined the procession. So, too, did political prisoners of all generations who had also survived torture, not just under the regime of Bashar al-Assad, but under that of his equally dictatorial father Hafez, who seized power in a coup in 1971 and ruled until his death in 2000.
They came not just to pay tribute to the man who gave voice to Syria’s suffering but to celebrate the fact that, for the first time in so long, there is a genuine atmosphere of freedom in the country.
“One of the biggest changes is that we don’t need to be frightened of each other any more,” said Abdullah Fadel, who was held at Sednaya for nine years in the 1990s and for a further three months in 2016.
“I can put my arm around someone I don’t know on the street and tell them what I really think, knowing that no one is going to do anything to me. I never imagined I would live to see such a thing happening in Syria.”
Arrested for belonging to the Communist Party, Fadel endured repeated torture during the early period of his first spell in custody.
He survived prison, he says, by teaching himself English then translating George Orwell’s Coming Up for Air into Arabic, setting him up for a lifelong career as a translator of novels.
It is experiences such as these, inflicted on so many, that helped stir up such hatred in the Assad regime, and reasons people flocked to join Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist movement that toppled it.
Among those at Hamada’s funeral, there was optimism that HTS would be better than the Assad regime – “it could hardly be worse”, said Fadel’s wife, although that was tempered by others by the fear that it might be.
“We have only walked half way,” said Mahmoud Isa, a 61-year-old former political prisoner. “The other half is to come and it will not be easy because we now need to move beyond the men with guns. Syria wants democracy. If we get dictatorship again, we will rise up again.”
Isa is not the only person expressing reservations.
Across the capital, in the city’s ancient Christian quarter, three 19-year-old women – Jessica, Miriam and Giselle – were in a reflective mood as they sipped coffee in a cafe off Straight Street.
As a minority, they hesitantly admitted, they regarded Assad, a member of another minority, the Alawites, as a protector from extremist Sunni Arab groups, HTS among them.
Yet it was only now that state television, which long parroted the government line, had fallen that they had become aware of the atrocities the Assad regime had perpetrated, they said.
“We lived in the dark,” said Miriam, who did not want to give her surname.
Just as they had underestimated the abuses of the Assad regime, so far, they said, they had exaggerated the dangers of HTS, which once pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda but now insists it is pursuing moderation and tolerance.
Although bars in the Christian quarter remain closed, just in case, she knew of no retribution against Christians, Jessica said, despite their reputation as Assad supporters. That said, she added, these are early days and things could change.
“We are waiting,” she said. “It will take time to build confidence. We are hoping that we will live in a Syria where everyone is genuinely free and everyone can follow their own religion.”
The Telegraph London
Here is the link:
https://www.afr.com/world/middle-east/syria-hails-global-hero-executed-as-assad-fled-20241213-p5ky5o
The more you read about the Assad regime the more one wonders just why he was allowed to rape Syria and Syrians for so long! The US, US, Europe and indeed OZ knew how evil he was but just stood by and watched for 13 long years!
Surely the CIA or MI6 could have found an assassin to sort this horror out. You have to wonder why not?
The West seems rather too prone to high ideals and the toleration of evil I fear.
What do you think? Should our beliefs be followed up by action? There have been all sorts from Idi Amin down who should have been dealt with more swiftly IMVHO but who am I to judge?
Worse still he was a doctor!!!!!
David.
I reckon I have been reading the same things for the last 15+ years
This latest appeared a few days ago:
By Amy Sarcevic
Friday, 13 December, 2024
An AI-enabled healthcare sector is a potentially idyllic place, where healthy habits are supported, early disease is detected, and, ultimately, deaths are prevented.
But while 85% of healthcare leaders have an AI strategy, much of this multibillion-dollar industry remains untapped, with clinical AI virtually non-existent in Australian hospitals.
Of those who are dabbling in other AI uses, penetration is limited, with only half of healthcare providers currently using the technology in other forms.
This contrasts with sectors like financial services, where global AI spend is projected to reach $97 billion by 2027.
So what is impeding the healthcare industry’s uptake of this readily available technology?
Access to data
The quality of AI decision-making from large language models largely rests on the quality of data used to train it — a realisation that has helped earn data kudos as the ‘new oil’.
Analysing data from electronic health records, an award-winning AI tool by Telstra Health, RMIT and the Digital Health CRC, for example, can detect early signs of deterioration in frail aged care residents.
“It monitors structured and free-text EHRs for 36 evidence-based signs of deterioration. In turn, it provides staff with a frailty index for each resident, and alerts them to falls, depression and mortality risk,” said Annette Schmiede, CEO of Digital CRC, the organisation that facilitated the research initiative.
However, as Schmiede points out, accessing healthcare data continues to be challenging, with organisations still facing delays when requesting it.
“We are still experiencing significant delays in access to data, despite it being constantly identified as an important element in driving innovation,” she told Hospital + Healthcare.
“An example of this is a project we recently ran, which can only commence after two years of waiting for the data to be made available by the state authority.
“We have excellent relationships with the data custodians, we’re well respected, but the whole process is still taking too much time — and that needs some urgent attention.”
While Schmiede is encouraged by the government’s work with health information exchanges — in which health data is being uploaded onto common platforms — she says more work is needed to improve access in the interim.
“There’s widespread acknowledgement of the issue, but we’re still not seeing that being translated into faster access.”
Interoperability
The seamless exchange of data between disparate parts of the healthcare system is also important for end-users — and an ongoing source of frustration for those using new technologies to track health metrics.
“It’s great if you have an AI-powered health app that monitors your vitals over time. But if that information is not automatically added to your health records, then you need to repeatedly explain it to your GP, then to a specialist, and to an allied health professional.
“It affects the user experience for staff and patients, and opens the door for errors and omissions, which takes away a lot of the benefit,” Schmiede said.
According to Dr Stephanie Allen from Kearney, part of the interoperability puzzle is ensuring that the data and insights collected by personal health devices or apps, are “clinical grade”, and don’t produce false positives.
“False positives can create unnecessary anxiety for users but also swamp the already stretched primary health system, with the expectation to ‘test’ again before a formal diagnosis is given,” she said.
In addition, data from different apps and devices should be brought together to paint a full picture of a person’s health.
“We know that our health is interconnected with many aspects of our lifestyle. For example, the relationship between mental wellbeing, nutrition and sleep is only beginning to be understood.
“Combining this data to form a more holistic picture of an individual’s health is fundamental to making the right behavioural adaptations, to protect and/or enhance our overall wellbeing.
“If we have variable levels of quality and reliability of data capture this becomes an impossibility,” Allen said.
Upskilling the workforce
Even a well-oiled healthcare system, with seamless connectivity, will not support the use and uptake of AI if end-users cannot easily navigate it.
For this reason, Digital CRC is taking steps to improve digital literacy and upskill the healthcare workforce, through its Education and Capacity building and Emerging Leaders programs.
“These were set up with the aim of producing the next generation of digital health professionals. Through this program, they will learn first-hand how to use digital health and data analytics to improve patient outcomes and clinician experiences,” Schmiede said.
“We are empowering this group to revolutionise health care and become change agents.”
Optimistic outlook
With projects like these, Schmiede is confident that Australia’s AI future is bright and that more people will feel empowered to use the technology.
“By introducing it responsibly, we can gradually build industry confidence. And as AI becomes more widespread, we’ll be forced to address issues like data access and interoperability head-on,” she concluded.
Here is the link:
It is getting to the stage where I am not hopeful of seeing much change in my lifetime! Maybe in the next?
Does anyone have some concrete evidence that the Digital Health CRC is actually making a difference or is the whole thing a total waste of money?
Views and comments welcome!
David.
This appeared last week:
Experts warn that mirror bacteria, constructed from mirror images of molecules found in nature, could put humans, animals and plants at risk of lethal infections
Ian Sample Science editor
Fri 13 Dec 2024 06.00 AEDT
World-leading scientists have called for a halt on research to create “mirror life” microbes amid concerns that the synthetic organisms would present an “unprecedented risk” to life on Earth.
The international group of Nobel laureates and other experts warn that mirror bacteria, constructed from mirror images of molecules found in nature, could become established in the environment and slip past the immune defences of natural organisms, putting humans, animals and plants at risk of lethal infections.
Although a viable mirror microbe would probably take at least a decade to build, a new risk assessment raised such serious concerns about the organisms that the 38-strong group urged scientists to stop work towards the goal and asked funders to make clear they will no longer support the research.
“The threat we’re talking about is unprecedented,” said Prof Vaughn Cooper, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Pittsburgh. “Mirror bacteria would likely evade many human, animal and plant immune system responses and in each case would cause lethal infections that would spread without check.”
The expert group includes Dr Craig Venter, the US scientist who led the private effort to sequence the human genome in the 1990s, and the Nobel laureates Prof Greg Winter at the University of Cambridge and Prof Jack Szostak at the University of Chicago.
Many molecules for life can exist in two distinct forms, each the mirror image of the other. The DNA of all living organisms is made from “right-handed” nucleotides, while proteins, the building blocks of cells, are made from “left-handed” amino acids. Why nature works this way is unclear: life could have chosen left-handed DNA and right-handed proteins instead.
Scientists have already manufactured large, functional mirror molecules to study them more closely. Some have even taken baby steps towards building mirror microbes, though constructing a whole organism from mirror molecules is beyond today’s know-how.
The work is driven by fascination and potential applications. Mirror molecules could be turned into therapies for chronic and hard-to-treat diseases, while mirror microbes could make bioproduction facilities, which use bugs to churn out chemicals, more resistant to contamination.
The fresh concerns over the technology are revealed in a 299-page report and a commentary in the journal Science. While enthusiastic about research on mirror molecules, the report sees substantial risks in mirror microbes and calls for a global debate on the work.
Beyond causing lethal infections, the researchers doubt the microbes could be safely contained or kept in check by natural competitors and predators. Existing antibiotics are unlikely to be effective, either.
“Unless compelling evidence emerges that mirror life would not pose extraordinary dangers, we believe that mirror bacteria and other mirror organisms, even those with engineered biocontainment measures, should not be created,” the authors write in Science.
“We therefore recommend that research with the goal of creating mirror bacteria not be permitted, and that funders make clear that they will not support such work.”
Dr Kate Adamala, a synthetic biologist at the University of Minnesota and co-author on the report, was working towards a mirror cell but changed tack last year after studying the risks in detail.
“We should not be making mirror life,” she said. “We have time for the conversation. And that’s what we were trying to do with this paper, to start a global conversation.”
Prof Paul Freemont at Imperial College London, who was not involved in the report, called it an “excellent example of responsible research and innovation”.
“Whilst the authors clearly point out the need for an open and transparent debate on the development of mirrored living organisms, there is also a need to identify the promise and positive uses of mirror chemistry in biological systems, albeit in a limited and perhaps future regulated manner,” he said.
Here is the link:
I reckon the authors have something here as bugs created like this would be totally novel to our immune system and this just go ahead and damage us totally unconstrained!
I don’t
think we should be even experimenting with these nasties!!!!! I agree with the headline!
David.
The conclusion of a rancid story of greed and evil human exploitation emerged recently.
David Ovalle
Dec 15, 2024 – 7.57am
Washington | Business consulting giant McKinsey will pay $US650 million ($1 billion) to end a criminal probe by the Justice Department into the company’s role in bolstering sales of addictive pain pills, prosecutors announced on the weekend.
In what officials described as a landmark case, US attorneys in Massachusetts and Virginia filed charges of conspiracy to misbrand a drug and obstruction.
The investigation stems from the company’s work advising Purdue Pharma on how to “turbocharge” sales of the blockbuster opioid OxyContin, officials said. State and federal officials allege Purdue helped kick-start the nation’s opioid crisis in the late 1990s and 2000s by aggressively marketing the drug to doctors while downplaying its addiction risk.
It marks the first time a management consulting company has faced criminal charges related to work with the opioid industry, said Christopher R. Kavanaugh, US attorney for the Western District of Virginia.
“It sends a powerful message to the consulting industry,” Mr Kavanaugh said at a news conference in Boston on Friday (Saturday AEDT).
McKinsey’s agreement also resolves a Justice Department civil investigation into allegations the company’s work with Purdue led to false claims to federal health insurance programs.
The agreement adds to more than $US989 million that McKinsey agreed earlier to pay to settle lawsuits from states, local governments, school districts, health insurers and benefit plans. It is another black eye for the consulting giant. This month, a McKinsey subsidiary agreed to pay more than $US122 million to resolve a federal probe into allegations it sought to bribe government officials in South Africa.
McKinsey said in a statement that it should never have worked with Purdue. “This terrible public health crisis and our past work for opioid manufacturers will always be a source of profound regret for our firm,” the company said.
Martin Elling, a former McKinsey senior partner, has also agreed to plead guilty to allegations he destroyed records related to the company’s consulting with Purdue, federal court records show. His attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
McKinsey began working with Purdue in 2004, continuing even after an affiliate of the Connecticut drugmaker and several executives pleaded guilty to misbranding OxyContin in 2007.
According to a court filing on Friday, the company helped try to fend off proposed Food and Drug Administration restrictions designed to minimise the risk of the opioid. Amid slumping sales, McKinsey advised Purdue on how to target doctors who then wrote medically unnecessary prescriptions, prosecutors said.
McKinsey consultants even rode along with Purdue sales representatives to visit doctors, officials said.
“They were no better than street level dealers reaping a profit from addiction and misery of others,” said Boston FBI Special Agent in Charge Jodi Cohen.
McKinsey has stopped working with opioid industry companies. If the company successfully completes five years of federal oversight, prosecutors will drop the charges, according to the agreement.
Purdue, facing a tsunami of lawsuits, filed for bankruptcy in 2019. In June, the Supreme Court scuttled a bankruptcy plan that would have settled lawsuits with governments and victims. The company estimated the settlement could be worth up to $US10 billion.
Purdue, the family that owns the company and creditors are engaged in court-ordered mediation scheduled to conclude on December 23; Purdue is asking for an extension through late January. In a statement on Friday, the company said it was working toward a settlement that would compensate victims and curb the opioid crisis.
The McKinsey agreement marks another moment of reckoning for companies involved in the opioid crisis, which started with prescription pills that often ended up on the illicit market, fuelling addiction.
As prescriptions for opioids declined in recent years, the epidemic of addiction shifted to illicit fentanyl, which has proved even deadlier. Drug overdoses killed more than 100,000 people in the United States in each of the past three years, although officials have noted a sharp decrease in 2024.
Local and state governments have filed thousands of lawsuits against companies involved with prescription opioids, arguing that the flood of potent pain pills wreaked havoc on communities.
The legal strategy of using state public nuisance laws has resulted in more than $US50 billion in settlements with drug makers, distributors, pharmacy chains and others. In cases that have gone to trial, some cities and counties have won large judgments.
But others have lost. The latest example happened on Tuesday, when the Oklahoma Supreme Court sided with retail chains that had been ordered to pay $US650 million to help communities suffering from the crisis.
Washington Post
Here is the link:
There are some really excellent documentaries on all this. Here is a link to a good one:
https://www.netflix.com/title/81095069
The combination of greed, exploitation and raw evil in pushing Oxycontin was really something to behold!
That 100,000 people died of overdoses is just too horrific to contemplate – but shows just how evil people driven by financial greed can be!
Great to see the piper is being paid
and the crooks are being bankrupted! Sends a message to those over-smart consultants!
There is a lesson here I believe…
David.
This appeared last week:
Households and businesses would be better served by a rational debate on the merits of including nuclear power in the future energy mix. They aren’t getting that.
Angela Macdonald-Smith Senior resources writer
Dec 13, 2024 – 7.06pm
Australia’s fractious debate about how to achieve its energy transition ambitions in its electricity sector has become even more muddled by the release of the costings of the Coalition’s nuclear plan. And that’s no help to households and businesses.
Any hope of a rational debate about the merits of including nuclear power in the country’s future energy mix to support decarbonisation goals – something broadly supported by industry struggling to source reliable, affordable, low-carbon power – had already disappeared before Friday.
But arguments over economic modelling using different assumptions to reach near-meaningless cost estimates stretching out 25 years, and then relating those to household and business power bills right now, have escalated the situation to another level.
Certainly, any pledges of lower prices for consumers – as signalled by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and shadow energy spokesman Ted O’Brien repeatedly at their media conference in Brisbane – can have little meaning.
To be noted is that all the estimates by Frontier Economics of the Coalition’s and Labor’s transition plans – ranging from $331 billion to $594 billion – exclude Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
They also do not include the investment required in electricity distribution, and households’ investments in rooftop solar, batteries, electric vehicles and electrified appliances. That means the total costs to consumers of the transition would be much higher in any case than either estimate would suggest.
Baked into the contrasting positions on nuclear taken by major parties is a marked divergence on whether baseload power – now dubbed “always-on” power by the Coalition – is what is even needed in today’s power grid.
For the Coalition, replacing baseload coal with another round-the-clock but emissions-free technology is the way to go. As Dutton said: “We just can’t pretend any more than part-time power is going to run a full-time economy.”
But that stands in stark opposition to the advice from the Australian Energy Market Operator, which underscores the need for flexible power to maximise the use of low-cost renewables. In effect, “always-on” power is an outdated concept. Renewables can in theory at times already meet 100 per cent of electricity demand, were that technically possible on the grid.
Under AEMO’s calculations, using the “progressive” scenario favoured by the Coalition, only 21.5 terawatt-hours of generation is expected to come from coal by 2035, just 9.3 per cent of the total. That compares with 38 per cent in the Coalition’s model.
The worry is that having to run a high-cost power supply source around the clock to meet more than one-third of annual demand will mean switching off rooftop solar systems to make the system balance, and significant wastage of low-cost renewables.
That would be a blow not just to households but to the confidence of private investors lining up to develop wind, solar and storage plants that are needed now to help ease the country’s creaking electricity grid.
Here is a link:
I am confused as to why this debate has suddenly started up again when it seems to be pretty clear that we are slowly phasing out coal derived power ( as we need to and should be ) replacing it with solar, wind and hydro etc. Right now it is not clear to me just how much nuclear power is actually needed and by when.
We now have enough experience globally to know that nuclear power is feasible and reliable but is also pretty expensive compared with pretty much any other sources. If serious alternatives exist – and they do - we should explore them fully and only move to nuclear when it is price competitive in sunny and hydro-rich Australia!
Essentially, the bottom line is that there are transitions to be made to maximum renewables and necessary nuclear over the next decade or two. How much of what and when is well above my pay-grade!
My one plea is that the transition be technically driven and not politically driven! We need to keep the politics out and the scientific decision making in! What is the chance of that happening do you reckon?
Not high I suspect!
David.
Here are the results of the poll.
Are You Concerned About The Rise Of Antisemitism We Seem To Be Observing At Present?
Yes 14 (50%)
No 3 (11%)
It Is Not Changing 11 (39)
I Have No Idea 0 (0%)
Total No. Of Votes: 28
An interesting outcome with a small majority quite concerned…
Any insights on the poll are welcome, as a comment, as usual!
Fair voting turnout.
0 of 28 who answered the poll admitted to not being sure about the answer to the question!
Again, many, many special thanks to all those who voted!
David.
This appeared last week – and the cathedral is now open again!
Five years since it was gutted by fire, the soul of Paris is about to reopen its doors. Our critic is wowed by the buttery stonework, gleaming lead and gawp-inducing gilding
Sat 7 Dec 2024 00.05 AEDT
With France plunged into political turmoil, and president Emmanuel Macron’s approval ratings at an all time low, the country might be thankful to have a distraction of epic proportions this weekend. All eyes will be on Notre Dame tomorrow, as Paris prepares to unveil the interior of its hallowed cathedral, “the soul of France” finally resurrected following a meticulous five-year, €700m (£582m) restoration.
The herculean project has seen 2,000 oak trees gathered from forests across France, hewn into beams with axes and pegged into great trusses by hand using medieval tools. It has witnessed over a thousand cubic metres of limestone being hauled into place, chiselled into leaping arches and gurning gargoyles, as well as 4,000 square metres of lead, rolled, crimped and moulded into ornamental roofing. It has also been the stage for a celebrity wallet-waving spectacle, seeing French luxury goods billionaires racing to outdo each other in the size of their donations – reaching almost €900m (£749m) just two days after the fire, endowing the cathedral with a substantial maintenance kitty for years to come.
The astonishing and lavishly funded endeavour has been a lifeline for endangered craftsmanship, single-handedly reviving a host of specialist building industries across France and beyond. The project mobilised a 2,000-strong army of master masons, carpenters, roofers, glassworkers, organ restorers and painting conservators, many using centuries-old techniques. This elaborate medieval cosplay has returned the majestic pile to just the way it was before the 2019 fire – only cleaner, brighter and more colourful than ever.
“Even more beautiful than before,” is how Macron describes it, “in the renewed radiance of the blond stones and the colour of the chapels.” It’s a surreal sight. The seamless surfaces of creamy stonework have been bleached of their centuries of sooty patina, now looking as if they have been carved from a single slab of butter. The painted side chapels glow with the blazing Technicolor and gilding of a Las Vegas casino. The result might feel too Disneyish for those who prefer their cathedrals aged and timeworn, but the effect is as close to time-travel as it comes, as if the medieval guilds had just left the building.
As crowds gather outside to gawp up at the freshly carved tracery and gleaming leadwork, however, they might not be aware that the most radical part of the entire project is actually right beneath their feet. The biggest impact on Paris will not be found in the rebuilt forêt of oak hidden away in the attic, or the ornamental rooftop cresting, but in how the fire has provided a catalyst to rethink the surrounding area as a model for climate-friendly public space on an increasingly scorching planet.
“The project of the cathedral was to rebuild it identically,” says Patrick Bloche, first deputy mayor of Paris, as he stands outside Notre Dame’s freshly scrubbed facade, puffing on his pipe. “On the other hand, outside the building, we wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to completely reimagine what the surroundings could be.”
In the days following the fire, there was much enthusiasm among a certain cast of architects about what form a new-look Notre Dame might take. Norman Foster imagined crowning the charred nave with a vaulted glass roof and a spire topped with an observation deck – “a work of art about light,” he declared, which would “capture the confident spirit of the time”. Others proposed glitzy roofs made of Baccarat crystal, or a memorial spire in the shape of a gigantic golden flame. Thankfully, such hubris was ditched for a faithful reconstruction, but the fragmented and congested surroundings offered scope for a bolder approach.
“The area around Notre Dame has changed so much throughout history,” says Bas Smets, the Belgian landscape architect who won an open competition to redesign the area around the cathedral in 2022. “It’s like a privileged witness of a city looking for its form. The question now is what kind of spaces we need for the city of tomorrow.”
On Friday 29 November, Smets was first in line to explain his vision to Macron, on the president’s first visit to inspect the reborn Notre Dame, before its official inauguration tomorrow. They stood on the first completed piece of the “petit parvis”, the forecourt in front of the cathedral, which Smets plans to expand to mirror the full length and width of the building, with grooved limestone flags reflecting the chequerboard marble floor inside.
His plan – to be completed by 2027 at a cost of €50m, funded by the city – will create a much more open setting for the cathedral, encouraging visitors to explore more of the ÃŽle de la Cité at a slower pace, beyond just queueing up for a peek inside Notre Dame before hot-footing it to the Eiffel Tower. The new spaces will prioritise people over vehicles, seeing roads closed and pedestrianised, and reconnect the cathedral to the Seine for the first time in generations, with a new 400 metre-long riverside promenade. Plenty of shade will be provided by 160 new drought-tolerant trees, which will also help to shield queueing visitors from winter winds, while the hottest days will be relieved by an ingenious air-cooling water feature – with a splash of fun.
“We were inspired by seeing how they clean the streets of Paris,” says Smets, whose team includes the French urban planning agency GRAU and heritage specialists Neufville-Gayet. The city is unusual in having a dual water network, one for drinking water and another for untreated non-potable water, for irrigation, cleaning and firefighting – a 19th-century legacy of Baron Haussmann’s urban improvements. On hot summer days, the street-cleaning vans often leave this water running to cool down the roads and pavements. Learning from the locals, Smets has designed an 80 metre-long stretch of the plaza to be flooded with a thin 5mm-deep sheet of water on the hottest days, forming a reflecting pool that also provides evaporative cooling, lowering the air temperature by several degrees. Like the fountains of Kings Cross in London, it promises to be a popular place for a cooling splash – with enough space before the cathedral entrance, church wardens will be relieved to hear, for damp feet to dry off.
Given the expected 15 million visitors a year, one of the designers’ chief tasks was to improve crowd control, which Smets has partly addressed with a new entrance – dramatically punching new openings in the quay retaining wall facing the Seine. Enabling people to arrive by boat, this entrance will connect to a new visitor centre housed in a former 1960s underground car park, and provide a theatrical route up to the plaza, giving a worm’s-eye view of Notre Dame’s famous western facade for the first time.
Not all Parisians have welcomed these bold changes. An angry petition launched in April 2023, titled “Save Notre Dame gardens!”, gained more than 55,000 signatures, with concerns focused on the removal of fences around areas of lawn, as well as the removal of benches and flowerbeds, “completely distorting the spirit of the place”. Others opined that the scheme was “too British” in its plan to surround the cathedral with open gardens. Smets insists that some of the criticism was down to a misinterpretation of the plans – the historic benches, for example, will all remain – but the design has been altered to retain more of the fencing, only removing a section to open up the riverside path. “It became a political thing,” he says. “In the competition, we were asked to take out the fences, so we did. But keeping the fence, for me, is totally fine. We’re actually returning the situation to how it was in 1848, with a fence around the gardens, but not blocking access to the Seine.”
With an eye on Paris’s wider urban greening efforts, which have been a chief hallmark of socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo’s tenure, the project will also act as a laboratory for future landscaping work elsewhere in the city. While the main plaza will see an existing avenue of horse chestnut trees extended along the street, encouraging people to take a full circuit around the cathedral, a former car parking area to the east will become an experimental arboretum of different species.
“We imagine it as a living climatic laboratory,” says Smets, “to see how well different trees perform over time.” After the city’s plane trees suffered from beetle infestations, and others have been stricken by drought, the pressure is on to determine which varieties will thrive in the rapidly changing climate. “This is such an important, symbolic site,” he adds. “But it is also an opportunity to reimagine public space as a way to create a better outdoor microclimate – looking to the past to inform the city of the future.”
Here is the link:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/dec/06/notre-dame
This looks just glorious in all the pictures I have seen. Raises the spirits to see tasks like this undertaken and brought to fruition!
David.
This appeared last week!
December 7, 2024 — 12.30am
On the morning of September 4, Marge was faced with a completely blank computer screen.
A few attempts to turn it on – and a few panicked minutes – later, a message from “IT support” popped up. It offered to help.
Marge had to ring a certain number to connect with a technician. Then: “I was told by someone to do nothing and to wait for someone to call me, which happened after about 30 seconds.
“This, I have found out, was the beginning of many unauthorised transfers of moneys from my two accounts.”
Devastatingly, the fraudsters first stole $49,500 from Marge, followed by $50,000, $10,000, $9000, and other amounts of smaller denominations.
“This was all over a period of three days and only stopped when a friend of mine visited and suggested to me that the so-called technicians could be my hackers, which turned out to be the case,” she recounted to me.
She was told not to turn off her computer or phone as they wanted to keep in contact; she was also urged not to answer any other calls “as they might actually be from the hackers”.
This scam is the remote access or Trojan type – with the fraudsters probably gaining access to Marge’s computer via a Facebook link she had used to purchase a new iPad (that never arrived).
By the time Marge realised she was the victim of such a sophisticated scam, only $229.80 could be recovered – though banks are working together to try to reverse fraudulent transactions, the rest of the transferred funds had been immediately cleared out of the recipient account. She wryly says: “Felt like having a huge party!”
This year, for the Money section, I’ve taken a deep dive into the scams perpetrated on our readers, in a bid to recover some of their lost money. And sometimes it has worked.
As scams increase, a new avenue for compensation is available for fans who fall victim to fake tickets.
With a growing legion of criminals now trying to dupe you out of money, particularly over Christmas, Scamwatch has issued a comprehensive list – until fraudsters next evolve their tactics – of the most prevalent scams:
It’s worth keeping these broad categories or themes front of mind. Also be on high alert if you are, or intend, transacting any property. PEXA or settlement scams – where criminals discover your purchase intention and intercede with an authentic-looking mule account – are some of the fastest growing scams.
What should you do if you are scammed? Cut off all contact and immediately contact your bank.
Note well that a further layer of scams now exists too: for which you are targeted if you Google “how to reclaim money” or “How to get back money lost to a scam”. Many of the results that pop up are secondary scam sites, requiring payment up front or worse.
What has all my advocating for scam victims this year shown me?
The key to a bank being held liable, or issuing any refund, is never to hand over passwords, or verification, token or one-time access codes. It’s in the terms and conditions and if you’ve typed or told a fraudster, you are unlikely to ever see your money again.
Instead, never trust anyone who tries to get you to part with vital information. Always hang up and get the official number from your own search of an institution that cold calls you. Find out if the contact is legitimate.
Do not click on links anywhere, from anyone, that you don’t trust (including online shopping “stores”; reputable ones, too, are sometimes duplicated in “shadow websites”).
And remember, most scams lie beneath a convincing cover story: from an authority (a government institution, bank or a telco), a deeply-in-need person (sick or downtrodden), a love prospect (romance or dating scams) or a loved one (“Mum I’ve lost my phone”).
All are designed to get behind your defences … and into your bank accounts. Please stay safe from scams this Christmas. And have a wonderful one.
Here is the link:
As the good man said “be careful out
there!” The are a lot of nasty people out there wanting to exploit you and cause pain and anguish and financial loss!
David.
