Election promises to make it easier to get GP appointments will be 'challenging', say experts

Both the leading parties have made bold pledges on GP access, amid growing public concerns about long waits for appointments.

David Cameron has promised everyone in England will be able to see their GP between 8am and 8pm, seven days a week, by 2020. Labour meanwhile, have pledged to reintroduce a guarantee to see your GP within 48 hours of making an appointment.

Both pledges would require many more GPs. The Conservatives have said they will recruit 5,000 more and Labour 8,000.

However, experts writing in the BMJ today say that such increases were “unlikely to be achieved within a parliamentary term”.

According to latest figures, there were 40,584 GPs in England in 2014. However, the workforce is ageing and increasing pressures have led many to consider early retirement. The profession has also had difficulty recruiting new medical graduates in recent years, with more than one in every 10 training places left unfilled last year. 

Health news: in pictures

 

A major recruitment drive is now underway but the BMJ experts, from Imperial College London and the Commonwealth Fund think-tank, said the numbers promised by the political parties were optimistic. 

Labour’s 48-hour pledge “may prove unrealistic”, while Conservative ambitions to bring down the number of people attending A&E by extending GP opening times are based on slim evidence, the researchers write.

Labour promise to increase the NHS budget by £2.5bn per year above the Government’s plans – including funds for 8,000 more GPs in the next Parliament
The Conservative plan for longer opening hours is based on pilots that they say have led to 7.5 million getting better access – a number that is set to rise to 18 million by next March after the pilots were extended last month.

While the Department of Health has said early evidence suggests the pilots have relieved pressures on A&E, the BMJ authors said existing evidence was “inadequate to inform national policy”.

The Conservatives have committed £1.2bn in extra funding for GPs over the next four years.

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Labour meanwhile promise to increase the NHS budget by £2.5bn per year above the Government’s plans – including funds for 8,000 more GPs in the next Parliament.

However, the BMJ authors said that the biggest five-year increase in the GP workforce over the past 20 years was 5,414, between 2004 and 2009. Labour had also failed to deliver their 48-hour pledge when last in Government, the authors said.

“The aims and rationale of the policies outlined by the Conservative and Labour parties do not seem explicit,” they write. “One aim is undoubtedly to win election votes. But the aims for the NHS and for patients are less clear.”

Both parties defended their policies. The Liberal Democrats have also pledged to extend evening and weekend opening hours, but the BMJ authors said their proposals were “more reserved”.

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ADM Announces Plan to Fight Deforestation

Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world’s largest commodities suppliers, has joined the growing number of major agriculture and food companies promising to take steps to conserve forests that are threatened by the global demand for commodities like palm oil and soy.

The company, known as ADM, offered a brief outline of its commitment on Tuesday, including its intention to work with third-party environmental experts to assess the impact of its supply chains on forests and other areas that have high conservation value. It will formally announce details of its policy at its annual meeting on May 7.

“We are confident that our No Deforestation policy is both strong and appropriate for our company,” Victoria A. Podesta, chief communications officer for ADM, said in a statement. “It combines a clear commitment to no deforestation with progressive action focused on our most critical supply chains.”

ADM said it would work with the Forest Trust, a nonprofit group that helps companies reduce the impact of their supply chains on the environment. The company will begin by mapping its supply chains to help it determine where they harm fragile forest ecosystems.

In September, some of the world’s largest companies, including Cargill, Kellogg and Nestlé, signed a declaration that they would work to end tropical deforestation resulting from demand for commodities by 2030.

Many big companies have learned that incorporating conservation into their business plans can reduce costs — and they also are keenly aware that consumers are increasingly interested in how food ingredients are produced.

“ADM has shown that they can boost soy production by focusing expansion on degraded land and yield improvement, instead of sacrificing forests,” Glenn Hurowitz, chairman of Forest Heroes, a program backed by a coalition of environmental advocacy groups, said in a statement.

Cargill, an ADM competitor, has worked with the Nature Conservancy to develop satellite technology to track clear-cutting of forests in the Amazon. And since 2004, the company and the conservancy have teamed up in Brazil to increase production of soy on land cleared long ago.

ADM’s plan will focus on the Brazilian Amazon and endangered forests in other parts of South America where commodities are grown, Forest Heroes said in a statement.

“There’s still plenty of room for other big South American players like Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus to leapfrog ADM in the global race to deliver the environmentally and socially responsible products consumers want to buy,” Barbara Bramble, senior director for international wildlife conservation at the National Wildlife Federation, said in a statement.

Susan Eich, a spokeswoman for Cargill, said ADM’s policy seemed similar to her company’s. “We’re pleased to see the industry moving in the right direction,” she said.

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Obama’s Strategy on Climate Change, Part of Global Deal, Is Revealed

WASHINGTON — The White House on Tuesday introduced President Obama’s blueprint for cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by nearly a third over the next decade.

Mr. Obama’s plan, part of a formal written submission to the United Nations ahead of efforts to forge a global climate change accord in Paris in December, detailed the United States’ part of an ambitious joint pledge made by Mr. Obama and President Xi Jinping of China in November.

The United States and China are the world’s two largest greenhouse gas polluters. Mr. Obama said the United States would cut its emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025, while Mr. Xi said that China’s emissions would drop after 2030.

Mr. Obama’s new blueprint brings together several domestic initiatives that were already in the works, including freezing construction of new coal-fired power plants, increasing the fuel economy of vehicles and plugging methane leaks from oil and gas production. It is meant to describe how the United States will lead by example and meet its pledge for cutting emissions.

But the plan’s reliance on executive authority is an acknowledgment that any proposal to pass climate change legislation would be blocked by the Republican-controlled Congress.

At the heart of the plan are ambitious but politically contentious Environmental Protection Agency regulations meant to drastically cut planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from the nation’s cars and coal-fired power plants. The plan also relies on a speedy timetable, which assumes that Mr. Obama’s administration will issue and begin enacting all such regulations before he leaves office.

“We can achieve this goal using laws that are already on the books, and it will be in place by the time the president leaves office,” said Brian C. Deese, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser on climate change.

But the plan has also intensified opposition from Republican lawmakers who object to Mr. Obama’s effort to build a climate change legacy. Republicans have called the rules a “war on coal” and an abuse of executive authority. Nearly every potential Republican presidential candidate has criticized Mr. Obama’s climate change agenda. The issue is expected to be important in 2016 political campaigns, with Republican candidates vowing to undo Mr. Obama’s E.P.A. regulations.

Republican leaders immediately savaged the plan Tuesday and announced their intent to weaken or undo it — and, by extension, to block the international efforts to reach a climate accord in Paris.

“Even if the job-killing and likely illegal Clean Power Plan were fully implemented, the United States could not meet the targets laid out in this proposed new plan,” said Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader and Republican from Kentucky, who has been a vocal critic of the president’s plan.

“Considering that two-thirds of the U.S. federal government hasn’t even signed off on the Clean Power Plan and 13 states have already pledged to fight it,” Mr. McConnell continued, “our international partners should proceed with caution before entering into a binding, unattainable deal.”

Environmental groups praised the plan, particularly the president’s effort to work around Congress.

“The United States’ proposal shows that it is ready to lead by example on the climate crisis,” said Jennifer Morgan, an expert on international climate negotiations at the World Resources Institute, a Washington research organization. The research of Ms. Morgan’s group has concluded that the United States can substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions under existing federal authority.

However, environmental groups also said far deeper cuts are necessary beyond 2025 to stave off the most devastating effects of climate change.

“In fact the U.S. must do more than just deliver on this pledge — the 28 percent domestic target can and must be a floor, not a ceiling,” said Lou Leonard, vice president for climate change policy with the conservation group World Wildlife Fund.

Republicans also adamantly oppose Mr. Obama’s efforts to reach the United Nations accord in Paris. To bypass the Senate — which would have to ratify United States involvement in a foreign treaty — Secretary of State John Kerry and other diplomatic officials are working closely with their foreign counterparts to ensure that the Paris deal does not legally qualify as a treaty.

Senator Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, has put together legislation intended to nullify Mr. Obama’s international climate change agreements. Republican leaders may try to add that as an amendment to must-pass legislation, like a critical spending measure later this year, to force the hands of Mr. Obama and other Democrats.

“Just as we witnessed throughout recent negotiations with Iran and during the previous climate agreement with China, President Obama and his administration act as if Congress has no role in these discussions. That’s just flat-out wrong,” Mr. Blunt said in a written statement.

“We will not stand by and allow the president to unilaterally enact bad energy policies that hurt our nation’s poorest families and young people the most,” he added. “I’ll continue working with my colleagues to ensure Americans’ voices are heard.”

Todd D. Stern, the State Department’s chief envoy on climate change, is telling other countries that the elements of Mr. Obama’s plan will stay in place despite Republican opposition.

“Undoing the kind of regulation we’re putting in place is very tough,” he said.

However, the rules have already come under legal assault. Republicans intend to stress to other nations that the regulations could still fall to legal challenges.

There is also growing concern that most other countries have yet to submit similar plans. At a United Nations accord signed in Lima, Peru, in December, countries agreed to submit their plans to one of the organization’s websites by the end of March. Climate policy experts said keeping to that timetable was important, so that each government prepared and analyzed its own domestic climate change plans and those of other nations.

But as of Tuesday, only the European Union, Mexico, Norway and Switzerland had done so. Most of the rest of the world’s major polluters — including China, India, Brazil and Russia — are not expected to submit plans until at least June, and some expect delays until at least October.

The longer countries wait to submit their plans, experts say, the harder it could be to achieve a substantial agreement in December.

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ADM Announces Plan to Fight Deforestation

Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world’s largest commodities suppliers, has joined the growing number of major agriculture and food companies promising to take steps to conserve forests that are threatened by the global demand for commodities like palm oil and soy.

The company, known as ADM, offered a brief outline of its commitment on Tuesday, including its intention to work with third-party environmental experts to assess the impact of its supply chains on forests and other areas that have high conservation value. It will formally announce details of its policy at its annual meeting on May 7.

“We are confident that our No Deforestation policy is both strong and appropriate for our company,” Victoria A. Podesta, chief communications officer for ADM, said in a statement. “It combines a clear commitment to no deforestation with progressive action focused on our most critical supply chains.”

ADM said it would work with the Forest Trust, a nonprofit group that helps companies reduce the impact of their supply chains on the environment. The company will begin by mapping its supply chains to help it determine where they harm fragile forest ecosystems.

In September, some of the world’s largest companies, including Cargill, Kellogg and Nestlé, signed a declaration that they would work to end tropical deforestation resulting from demand for commodities by 2030.

Many big companies have learned that incorporating conservation into their business plans can reduce costs — and they also are keenly aware that consumers are increasingly interested in how food ingredients are produced.

“ADM has shown that they can boost soy production by focusing expansion on degraded land and yield improvement, instead of sacrificing forests,” Glenn Hurowitz, chairman of Forest Heroes, a program backed by a coalition of environmental advocacy groups, said in a statement.

Cargill, an ADM competitor, has worked with the Nature Conservancy to develop satellite technology to track clear-cutting of forests in the Amazon. And since 2004, the company and the conservancy have teamed up in Brazil to increase production of soy on land cleared long ago.

ADM’s plan will focus on the Brazilian Amazon and endangered forests in other parts of South America where commodities are grown, Forest Heroes said in a statement.

“There’s still plenty of room for other big South American players like Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus to leapfrog ADM in the global race to deliver the environmentally and socially responsible products consumers want to buy,” Barbara Bramble, senior director for international wildlife conservation at the National Wildlife Federation, said in a statement.

Susan Eich, a spokeswoman for Cargill, said ADM’s policy seemed similar to her company’s. “We’re pleased to see the industry moving in the right direction,” she said.

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Conference to Aid Syrians Falls Short of Expectations

In an ominous sign of possible donor fatigue, delegates to an international fund-raising conference for victims of the Syrian war pledged $3.8 billion on Tuesday, less than half the emergency humanitarian assistance sought by the United Nations for this year, even as the number of Syrians suffering mass displacement from the four-year-old conflict showed no sign of easing.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations, attending the third annual donor conference in Kuwait, sought to frame the amount pledged in positive terms, calling it an “unprecedented show of solidarity” to ease the crisis confronting 12 million Syrians, or about half the country’s population, including nearly four million who have sought refuge in neighboring countries.

“The Syrian people are victims of the worst humanitarian disaster of our time,” he said in a speech to the conference posted on the United Nations website.

While no specific target had been set for the conference, emergency aid advocates expressed alarm over what they saw as an anemic response to the record $8.4 billion that the United Nations requested in December for all of 2015.

“While some donors have been generous in Kuwait, the total aid pledged is less than half the amount needed this year to help people in desperate humanitarian need,” Andy Baker, the Syria crisis manager for Oxfam International, said in a statement posted on the group’s website.

“Unless more donor countries massively step up in the wake of the conference, the increasing numbers of people fleeing their homes and struggling to survive will be less and less likely to receive assistance,” he said. “What does the international community expect millions of Syrians to survive on?”

The United States and Kuwait accounted for about a quarter of all pledges at the conference. The American delegation, led by Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, announced a $507 million commitment, the biggest single-country donation so far. Kuwait pledged $500 million.

Other prominent donors included members of the European Union, which jointly pledged about $1.2 billion, about double the amount committed by the European Union a year ago.

Ms. Power used her announcement in part to castigate the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, asserting that it “seems to make choices on the basis of how best to increase human suffering” in the conflict that began in March 2011.

She also sought to cajole other donors, saying that despite the largest humanitarian appeal ever undertaken by the United Nations, “too many countries are giving the same amount or even less than they have in the past.”

The conference was held against the backdrop of widening mayhem in the region, with the ascendance of the Islamic State militant group, the Syrian conflict’s spread to neighboring Iraq and a rapidly escalating crisis in Yemen.

Over the past few days, Syrian government forces were routed from Idlib, a provincial capital of 500,000 people in the north, by a coalition of Islamist insurgents, including the Nusra Front, a branch of Al Qaeda. Yacoub El Hillo, the United Nations relief coordinator for Syria, said that fighting had caused “numerous deaths and injuries” and displaced 30,000 people.

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Russell Crowe and Turkey's ghost village of Kayakoy

So far, so customary. But what is remarkable is what lies across the road – a steep mountainside, terraced with layer upon layer of deserted stone buildings. Derelict churches, roofless houses and broken cisterns shimmer like a mirage as the sun beats down on the ruins and slants through the myriad windowless gaps. This is the ghost village of Kayakoy, deserted since the Greco-Turkish population exchange of 1923, when its Greek Orthodox occupants were "returned" to Greece. Empty now, it stands sentry-like on the hillside, separated by a century from the rhythms of modern daily life – a silent witness to a lost past. The people eating pancakes below and the passing tractors with their trailers of pomegranates are part of another world.

Since 1988, when it was designated a protected archaeological site, Kayakoy has increasingly attracted attention. Its haunting sadness was the inspiration for Louis de Bernières’ 2004 novel Birds Without Wings, in which it became the model for the fictional village of Eskibahce. Since then, it has become a regular coach-trip destination for tourists. But it’s now about to take a bigger step into the international spotlight, with the release of Russell Crowe’s new film, The Water Diviner, on Friday. Set in 1919, the film tells the story of an Australian farmer (Crowe) visiting Turkey in search of his three sons, all missing-presumed-dead following the Battle of Gallipoli, which started 100 years ago this month. The period time capsule of Kayakoy offered the ideal location, and the scenes that make up some of the closing sections of the movie were filmed there.

On location: Russell Crowe in a scene from the film (Mark Rogers) Shooting took place in spring last year, and locals were still buzzing with gossip when I visited later that summer. There was disappointment that, for his directorial debut, Crowe (perhaps not a pancake-lover) had brought his own catering vans, but delight that two well-known Turkish actors, Yilmaz Erdogan and Cem Yilmaz, had key roles. There was fascination – especially among older residents – in having been able to watch the ghost village rise from the dead, and see life being breathed back into its long-neglected streets. Local craftspeople had helped make wooden stalls for a bustling market scene, for instance. But, above all, there was hope that the film would encourage people visiting this part of Turkey’s exquisite Turquoise Coast to venture inland and discover the charms of the Kaya Valley for themselves.

A sleepy hotchpotch of rural communities and farmsteads snuggling into the backdrop of the Taurus Mountains, the valley is just 9km from the sea – equidistant from the bustling harbour town of Fethiye to the north and (to the south) the much-photographed blue-lagoon resort of Olu Deniz, where I was staying. Although breathtakingly beautiful, Olu Deniz’s seafront is very commercialised these days – there are full-English-breakfast joints galore and the skies are jostling with paragliders scattered like DayGlo Smarties across the blue. But my hotel, the elegant Beyaz Yunus (White Dolphin), was a gorgeous hillside retreat, its gardens brimming with butterflies and birdsong. As far from the madding crowd as I could have hoped, it proved the perfect jumping-off spot for a magical drive into the silent heart of Turkey’s recent past and the peacefulness of its rural present.

Beyaz Yunus The countryside of the Kaya Valley is given over to agriculture, and the pace of life is slow. Pomegranate and fig trees line the roadsides. Crumbling stone walls enclose silvery olive groves, vineyards and smallholdings of courgettes and peppers. (Later, the peppers are laid out to dry on flat roofs, alongside the pine cones that will be burned each winter in traditional wood-burning stoves.) Driving feels wonderfully timeless as you pass rustic stables and cowsheds, where small groups of cows or oxen stand around sleepily in dry straw. As I motored past a criss-cross of tobacco fields, an old shepherd sat smoking his pipe under a carob tree.

Kayakoy, the "new" village that sprawls below its ghost counterpart, is equally atmospheric, with its stone drinking fountain, traditional tea garden and narrow alleyways fluttering with washing lines and patrolled by ambling chickens. What especially intrigued me was to see the clusters of galleries and arts and crafts studios that have begun to appear, many in recently renovated old buildings close to the ruins. "It’s a circle," said Bulent philosophically, as I tucked into one of his special pancakes. "The Greeks in the ghost village were craftspeople – that’s why their houses stayed empty when they left. Stuck on a steep hillside, without gardens or stables, they were of no use to the Turkish farmers who were offered them." He smiled happily. "Now the artists are returning at last."

I looked up at the ruins and thought about the days when their narrow streets hummed with life, church bells rang and the school playground swarmed with children. Then I pictured them a few months ago, revitalised by actors and crew as the village’s broken shell was briefly reanimated. Those streets are all empty again. But how lovely to think that the incoming artists and craftspeople, the spiritual heirs of Kayakoy’s ghosts, are now bringing their own form of renewed life to the village. µ

Linda Cookson travelled with Turkey specialist Exclusive Escapes (020 8605 3500; exclusiveescapes.co.uk), which offers seven nights’ half board at Beyaz Yunus Olu Deniz from £1,050pp, including return flights from Stansted, Heathrow or Manchester, plus transfers and a day’s gulet cruise. The company also offers luxury self-catering villas in the Kaya Valley.

More information

gototurkey.co.uk

British passport-holders require an e-visa to visit Turkey, available from evisa.gov.tr/en for US$20 (£13.30).

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3D printed hand gives girl new lease of life

But when it came to getting one custom-made in a day by a 3D printer, that was a different story. Particularly when she got to pick the colours – her favourites, pink, blue and purple, like the ones on the tank top she was wearing. It didn’t hurt, either, that the appendage, called a robohand, looks a lot like the pair Marvel superhero Iron Man wears.

“It’s really cool!” the otherwise shy little girl said with an exuberant grin as she stood surrounded by high-tech computers in the Build It Workspace in this Orange County suburb. Build It Workspace is a 3D printer studio that teaches people to use high-tech printers and provides access to them for projects, as well as commercial printing.

She had left school early to go there with her mother, Nicole, to watch in fascination as her new hand took shape. She stood for minutes transfixed as it slowly moved from computer image to reality.

Faith’s arm only cost $50 to make
“It’s an amazing thing to be doing,” Build It’s president and founder, Mark Lengsfeld, said of making a hand from 450g of the same kind of plastic used in car parts  for children like Faith, who quickly outgrow expensive prosthetic limbs and have trouble even using them because of their size and weight. This is the first hand Mr Lengsfeld and his three employees have built.

Faith had compartment syndrome when her position during childbirth cut off the flow of blood to her left forearm, irreparably damaging it. After nine months of trying to save the limb, doctors determined they had to amputate just below the elbow.

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Faith’s parents were working with the non-profit group E-Nable to get her a 3D-printed hand, but the technology is so new there is a waiting list, her mother said. Then she learned of what Mr Lengsfeld’s company could do. E-Nable provides open-source technology for building the hand, Mr Lengsfeld said, making it economical for anyone with the right printer and a set of instructions to create one . Faith’s only costs $50 (£34), and when she outgrows it she can easily build a bigger replacement.

The little girl knows what she plans to do when she puts that new hand on. “Ride my bike!” she said with a big grin.

Although she’s already a competent rider, she noted that making turns with just one hand can be a little tricky.

AP

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Ordinary Lies, episode 3, TV review: Even the office bore is a dark horse in this tantalisingly unpredictable drama

As we leave Tracey and Viv’s woeful drug mule tale to one side (it’s still going on in the background), our attention turns to Corrie alumna Kathy (Sally Lindsay).

She’s the one who brought her neighbour’s humongous mutt into work because he was apparently sad after his girlfriend left. Oh how we laughed at this poor woman trying to manage this hulking shaggy dog around a car showroom.

But tonight Kathy shrugs off the bumbling mumsy label as she embarks on an illicit affair to satisfy the needs her sexless marriage can’t. Only it doesn’t go quite to plan as she and her fellow philanderer witness a brutal crime mid-tryst.

Kathy (Sally Lindsay) in Ordinary Lies Who would have thought that the most boring member of the office was actually a dark horse? From arranging an affair and making up an imaginary friend as a cover to pretending to be a member of victim support, Kathy is far from that happily married, mum-of-two stereotype.

We’re challenged over the nuances between love and sex and what “counts” as an affair. There are no black and white answers only varying shades of grey of what is right and wrong.

Lindsay delivers the goods as usual. This is an actress whose credits include Scott and Bailey, Mount Pleasant and Still Open All Hours. You really do feel for Kathy as she desperately attempts to put things right.

It’s a shame that this is “Kathy’s week” and the focus will invariably shift to another character in the next episode. This story, much like the drug trafficking episode, has legs and could easily fill a second instalment.

Brocklehurst makes unpredictable drama out of the humdrum in Ordinary Lies without losing believability or descending into melodrama. It’s safe to say that these set of modern fables continue to hold a grip over this reviewer.

Read more: Grace Dent on Ordinary Lies
Ordinary Lies ep 2 review: Michelle Keegan stars in far from mundane Northern drama

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The small songbird that travels 1,700 miles in non stop flight lasting three days

Scientists said that the annual open-water flight of the tiny blackpoll warbler from the north-east corner of North America to the forests of South America is one of the greatest migratory journeys on earth.

It was thought that the songbird, which spends summer in the boreal forests of Canada and the United States before heading south for the winter, flies overland down the eastern coast of America, stopping on its way to rest and feed.

A blackpoll warbler fitted with a miniaturised light-sensing geolocator to monitor its migratory route (PA) However, a study involving miniature electronic backpacks to monitor the birds’ movements has revealed that the blackpoll warbler simply flies due south over open water without stopping until it reaches landfall in the Caribbean about two or three days later, before flying on to Venezuela and Colombia.

We’re really excited to report that this is one of the longest non-stop overwater flights ever recorded for a songbird, and finally confirms what has long been believed to be one of the most extraordinary migratory feats on the planet,” said Bill DeLuca of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the first author of the study published in the journal Biology Letters.

Seabirds such as the Arctic tern and albatross are known to migrate many hundreds of miles over open sea but it is unusual for such a small songbird which weighs only 12 grams and normally lives in woodlands to fly for so long over the ocean, Dr DeLuca said.

“For small songbirds, we are only just now beginning to understand the migratory routes that connect temperate breeding grounds to tropical wintering areas,” he said.

The warbler is too small to carry conventional tracking devices so it was fitted with a small, lightweight recorder to monitor the time of sunrise and sunset, which allowed the scientists to estimate its precise longitude and latitude over a given time period.

The scientists fitted the recording backpacks to 20 warblers before they flew south for the winter and managed to retrieve the devices from five individuals during the following breeding season,

“When we accessed the locators, we saw the blackpolls’ journey was indeed directly over the Atlantic. The distances travelled ranged from 2,270 to 2,770 km,” said DeLuca.

The most incredible nature moments ever caught on camera

“It was pretty thrilling to get the return birds back, because their migratory feat in itself is on the brink of impossibility. We worried that stacking one more tiny card against their success might result in them being unable to complete the migration,” Dr DeLuca said.

“Many migratory songbirds, blackpolls included, are experiencing alarming population declines for a variety of reasons, if we can learn more about where these birds spend their time, particularly during the nonbreeding season, we can begin to examine and address what might be causing the declines,” he said.

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The scientists suggested that the birds use the quicker, over-sea route rather than the longer, coastal path because there are fewer overall risks in making a shorter journey compared to a longer trip over land.

"They eat as much as possible, in some cases doubling their body mass in fat so they can fly without needing food or water. For blackpolls, they don’t have the option of failing or coming up a bit short. It’s a fly-or-die journey that requires so much energy,” said  Ryan Norris of the University of Guelph, the team leader.

“These birds come back every spring very close to the same place they used in the previous breeding season, so with any luck you can catch them again. Of course there is high mortality among migrating songbirds on such a long journey, we believe only about half return," Dr Norris said.

Grahame Madge, spokesman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said that the blackpol warbler is one of the most frequently sighted North American songbirds seen in Britain.

“This is an exciting time for scientists studying bird migration and they are making some amazing discoveries, partly helped by the miniaturisation of technology, allowing the movements of tiny songbirds to be tracked,” Mr Madge said.

“This leap in capability is giving us a fascinating insight into bird migration at a time when many migratory birds are facing a conservation crisis with some species declining hugely. The more we understand about the movement of birds, the better we are able to protect them,” he said.

“We have much to learn about the movements of migratory birds this side of the Atlantic too.”

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The Story Behind ‘Woman in Gold’: Nazi Art Thieves and One Painting’s Return

There are many reasons that among the hundreds of thousands of cases involving artwork looted by the Nazis the story of Gustav Klimt’s “Adele Bloch-Bauer I” would particularly appeal to filmmakers. For one, there is the mesmerizing gold-flecked painting itself, which set a record price of $135 million when it was sold in 2006. Then there is the David-and-Goliath tale featuring a feisty octogenarian heroine — Ms. Bloch-Bauer’s niece Maria Altmann — taking on a recalcitrant Austrian government. And finally there is the satisfying conclusion. Ms. Altmann gets the portrait back. Justice prevails.

Yet even today, viewers may not realize how rare such justice is when it comes to the return of art looted during the Nazis’ reign of terror to its rightful owners or — as is now more likely, seven decades later — to their descendants.

As the new film “Woman in Gold,” starring Helen Mirren as the indefatigable Maria Altmann, acknowledges in a brief written prologue before the credits roll, more than 100,000 stolen works of art are still unaccounted for.

When Ms. Altmann first sought to reclaim some of her family’s paintings in 1998, there were reasons to think that the odds of restitution — crushingly low for so long — might have finally improved. After decades of neglect or outright opposition to restitution efforts, international public opinion had finally begun to turn in the wake of post-Cold War revelations about continuing malfeasance involving Nazi plunder. Official reports commissioned by both Switzerland and the United States detailed, for example, how the Swiss had reneged on agreements to return hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of gold stolen by Nazi Germany, while Swiss banks had agreed to a $1.25 billion settlement with Holocaust survivors after being sued for their refusal to return assets deposited for safekeeping during the war. Meanwhile, a new generation, less interested in covering up historical sins, exposed the ways governments, museum officials, dealers and buyers often systematically frustrated attempts to return stolen assets and art to the original owners.

In 1998, 44 countries, including Austria, signed the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, a nonbinding agreement that called for a “just and fair solution” for Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution.

That same year, the Austrian Parliament passed a law requiring museums to open up their archives for research and to return plundered property. The legislation was spurred in part by revelations about looted art published by the journalist Hubertus Czernin, portrayed in the film by Daniel Brühl. He discovered, in the formerly sealed archives of the Austrian Gallery, evidence that the country’s claim to the Bloch-Bauer Klimts was faulty.

Several paintings, including the 1907 portrait of Adele, had been hanging in museums after their confiscation by Nazi agents. Austria had long claimed that Ms. Bloch-Bauer, who died in 1925 from meningitis, left the portrait to the country in her will. But records showed that the artwork clearly belonged to her husband, the wealthy Jewish industrialist Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, who fled his homeland in 1938. And he had left his entire estate to his heirs — one of whom was his niece Ms. Altmann — when he died in 1945.

Still, the newly created Austrian restitution panel denied Ms. Altmann’s claim. It wasn’t until 2006, after the United States Supreme Court cleared the way for Ms. Altmann, then living in California, to sue the Austrian government, that an agreement was reached. Rather than pursue a lengthy and costly trial, Ms. Altmann agreed to binding arbitration and was awarded five of six paintings that had been seized from her family.

(The painting, now in the collection of the Neue Galerie in New York, is part of a new exhibition created in conjunction with the movie. Opening on Thursday, the exhibition explores the relationship between Klimt and his patron, Ms. Bloch-Bauer.)

On the world stage, there were follow-up conferences to the Washington Principles and another agreement in 2009, but still no enforcement mechanisms. Stuart E. Eizenstat, a former special State Department envoy, who negotiated the 1998 agreement, has repeatedly complained that the hoped-for widespread restitution never occurred, because of a combination of flagging governmental pressure and a variety of legal constraints. Nations have also devoted few resources to do the painstaking provenance research that can establish ownership claims.

As recent headlines show, occasionally there is progress. Earlier this month, an El Greco seized by the Gestapo in 1938 from a Viennese industrialist was returned to his family by a dealer. And the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland, which has inherited the trove of Nazi-era art found in the Munich apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, whose father was the Nazi-era art dealer, continues to pledge to return looted works to the families of the original owners.

But restitution tends to be the exception rather than the rule. A report issued this past September by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and the World Jewish Restitution Organization concluded that most countries have done little to live up to international agreements. Italy came in for particular censure, followed by Hungary, Poland, Argentina, Spain and Russia. (The report, while noting that Germany had made some progress, still chastised the government for keeping its discovery of the Gurlitt stash secret.)

The German newspaper Der Spiegel also took successive regimes to task in 2013 when reporters revealed that the German government, both on its own and with various museums, ignored or actively frustrated restitution for decades. At the time, the paper called it “a moral disaster that began in the 1950s and continues to the present day.”

In France, fewer than 100 of the 2,000 unclaimed works of looted art that hang in the country’s museums have been returned. In 2013, the French culture minister defended the record, saying it was “not because of a lack of will on the part of museums,” but because of scattered records and the deaths of so many who were involved.

While some of Europe’s special restitution committees have facilitated the return of stolen art, other decisions have been questioned. In 2013, a Dutch panel, for example, ruled that despite evidence that a Jewish industrialist persecuted by the Nazis was forced to sell two old masters paintings under duress, the heirs’ interest in restitution “carries less weight” than the interests of the museums that currently own them.

Most recovery attempts result in failure. In general, the few successful claimants tend to have big bankrolls, meticulous records and an exceptional run of luck.

What aided in the return of Adele Bloch-Bauer’s portrait was its location in a federal museum, said E. Randol Schoenberg, Ms. Altmann’s lawyer. In most instances, he said, the missing works are in private hands, and the owners either don’t know where they are or have no way of compelling their return.

That is the case with a valuable trove of art, including three multimillion-dollar Canalettos, owned by Bernhard Altmann, Ms. Altmann’s brother-in-law, and forcibly auctioned off after the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938. “The fact is that artworks in private collections outside of the United States are almost impossible to recover,” Mr. Schoenberg (played by Ryan Reynolds in the film) said.

Even in the United States, several legal experts and Jewish groups complain that some American museums have failed to live up to promises to settle claims based on the merits, a charge vigorously denied by art institutions.

The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, for example, has spent years fighting Marei von Saher, the heir of a noted Dutch Jewish art dealer who fled after the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. She is trying to reclaim two prized paintings of Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Jonathan Petropoulos, the former research director for art and cultural property for the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets, who provided expert testimony in Ms. Altmann’s case, has labeled the response of American museums “lamentable.”

Still, publicizing the successes, however rare, is important, Mr. Schoenberg emphasized. “Each time there’s a success, it gives people more hope, and that allows the restitution efforts to continue.”

Source link

- http://bit.ly/1bOSQJ7

Climate Change Threatens to Kill Off More Aspen Forests by 2050s, Scientists Say

The beloved aspen forests that shimmer across mountainsides of the American West could be doomed if emissions of greenhouse gases continue at a high level, scientists warned on Monday. That finding adds to a growing body of work suggesting forests worldwide may be imperiled by climate change.

The new paper analyzed the drought and heat that killed millions of aspens in Colorado and nearby states a decade ago. Such conditions could become routine across much of the West by the 2050s unless global emissions are brought under control, the study found.

“I think of aspens as a good canary-in-the-coal-mine tree,” said William R. L. Anderegg, the Princeton University researcher who led the new study, released online Monday by the journal Nature Geoscience. “They’re a wet-loving tree in a dry landscape. They may be showing us how these forests are going to change pretty massively as that landscape gets drier still.”

The study found that large aspen die-offs were a near-certainty only if greenhouse emissions were to continue at the runaway pace that has characterized the last decade. If global emissions are brought under control, the chances will improve that large stands of aspens could be preserved, the paper found.

In the fall, stands of trembling aspens are among the most breathtaking sights in the West, turning hillsides an iridescent golden hue.

Dr. Anderegg grew up camping and hiking in the aspen forests of southwestern Colorado and was dismayed when the trees started dying a decade ago. He has devoted part of his early scientific career to understanding the dieback — and the implications of it for forests elsewhere.

A central focus of the research has been to get a better handle on exactly how trees die in droughts, crucial for predicting how they will fare as global warming proceeds. Dr. Anderegg’s research on aspens suggests that when the ground gets too dry, air bubbles appear in the tiny tubes that carry water through the tree.

“These air bubbles block the pipes and interrupt water transport, giving the tree a kind of heart attack, basically,” Dr. Anderegg said.

He and his collaborators have devised a computer model that, when programmed with climate parameters, can predict aspen mortality with about 75 percent accuracy, and they are working to improve it. Applying their model to the rainfall and temperature conditions expected in coming decades as the climate warms under business-as-usual emissions yielded the prediction of a major aspen die-off.

Depending on exactly how dry the soil gets in the hotter climate, the mortality could extend beyond the West, with aspens — and perhaps many other types of trees — dying across the country, Dr. Anderegg said.

At a global scale, forests have been responding to the rising concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere with accelerated growth, allowing them to pull large amounts of the gas out of the air and thus helping to limit the effects of human emissions. How robust this forest “carbon sink” will remain through time is among the most important topics in climate science.

Dr. Anderegg’s paper fits with other recent findings suggesting that forests may not be as resilient to global warming as once hoped. For instance, a paper published two weeks ago found that the ability of the vast Amazon forest to pull carbon dioxide out of the air was weakening through time, with trees growing faster and dying earlier.

Craig D. Allen, a forest expert with the United States Geological Survey who was not involved in the new research, said Dr. Anderegg’s work was a step toward understanding what might happen across broad landscapes.

But, he warned, a huge amount of work is still needed on other tree types, in other locales, before the picture becomes clear. “There’s just a lot of variability between species,” Dr. Allen said. He noted that aspens have relatively shallow roots, limiting their ability to tap deep water in a drought, whereas other trees could be more resilient.

Forest experts, including Dr. Allen, are particularly worried about future “hot droughts,” similar to the one that struck Colorado and nearby states in the early 2000s. Huge stands of aspens died, and heat-loving beetles killed millions of acres of pine trees.

These droughts are characterized not just by a lack of rainfall but by high temperatures that suck residual moisture out of the soil. They are predicted to increase in a warming climate.

In addition to killing forests, these types of droughts may make food production more difficult, as is becoming evident in California, which is suffering through the fourth year of an especially warm drought.

The frequency and intensity of such lethal droughts later this century will most likely be reduced if efforts to control carbon dioxide emissions are successful over the next few decades, scientists believe.

“The more we lower emissions, the less the risks become,” Dr. Anderegg said. “The choice is in our hands.”

Source link

- http://bit.ly/1xwLIe3

General Election 2015: The masterminds behind the scenes

Lynton Crosby

The mastermind of many an election victory in his home country of Australia, he also helped Boris Johnson become London Mayor and is the undisputed supremo of the Tory campaign.

Lord (Andrew) Feldman

An old friend of David Cameron, he is the co-party chair. Will play a key role in head office and provide a link between Cameron and campaign HQ.

Stephen Gilbert

The director of campaigning, he is the link man between Tory headquarters and candidates fighting in marginal seats. Gilbert will be the first person to see canvass returns and will decide where to pour additional resources.

Craig Oliver (above)

The former editor of  BBC1’s News at Ten, he is now the director of communications and is in charge of media appearances and journalists’ access to Cameron.

George Osborne

The Chancellor, who is Cameron’s closest political ally, doubles as the Conservatives’ key election strategist.

Strategy

This can be summed up in three words: chaos versus competence. At every stage the Tories will highlight their handling of the economy and suggest voters cannot afford to risk letting Labour back into power. This strategy is based on a successful campaign devised by Crosby’s business partner in New Zealand.

Challenges

Message discipline is Crosby’s No 1 priority. But this means the Tories are not, so far, addressing other things that voters care about, such as schools and the NHS. They also risk being seen as not aspirational, and the nasty party – especially since they are planning £12bn of benefits cuts without saying where the axe will fall.

Labour: Key players

Tim Livesey

Chief of staff. Former Foreign Office official who later worked for Lambeth Palace. Working on Labour’s transition to government.

Douglas Alexander

Shadow Foreign Secretary who also heads election campaign. Faces SNP threat in his seat.

Lord (Stewart) Wood

Oxford academic and former Gordon Brown adviser. Shares Miliband’s outlook and hugely influential.

Marc Stears

Speechwriter and Oxford academic, close friend of the Labour leader since Oxford.

Spencer Livermore

Former Brown aide who fell out with him over the  “non-election” of 2007; returned from private sector to become campaign director.

Greg Beales

Director of strategy. A former McKinsey consultant who pores over opinion polls and focus groups.

Torsten Bell

A former aide at the  Treasury who keeps a  tight rein on policy and spending pledges

Lucy Powell

Former deputy chief of staff promoted to deputy chair of campaign last November when Miliband faced attempted coup.

Strategy

To portray the Conservatives as “for the few, not the many”, committed to “extreme” cuts which would threaten the NHS. Labour would “build an economy that works for working people” and safeguard the NHS.

Challenges

Labour has been dogged by weak ratings for Miliband, as a prime minister-in-waiting, and for the party on economic competence. Its anti-business rhetoric will mean it has few cheerleaders from the business world. It will need to keep a lid on its internal tensions and rivalries.

It also faces the nightmare of a votes collapse in Scotland. It has failed to rule out any post-election co-operation with the SNP for fear of alienating Scottish voters.

Liberal Democrats: Key players

Lord Ashdown

Former leader who is the election campaign chief. Has already started holding 6am meetings to dictate strategy.

Tim Gordon

Party chief executive credited with professionalising its headquarters operation.

Jonny Oates

Chief of staff to Clegg, likely to take charge of election debate preparations.

Baroness (Olly) Grender

Former head of communications and adviser to Nick Clegg, who is Ashdown’s deputy.

James McGrory

Clegg’s trusted spokesman will be at his side throughout the campaign.

Strategy

To pitch a “sensible middle ground” appeal to voters worried by Tory cuts and Labour spending plans. To point to Lib Dem achievements in government, including increasing income tax thresholds and championing the “pupil premium”. Needs to capitalise on the incumbency factor in  its existing seats.

Challenges

Rebuilding support from dismal poll ratings that have refused to budge for four years and overcoming the animus among voters towards Clegg. Trying to defend as many as possible of its 57 seats as it attempts to make its voice heard above the Greens, Ukip and the SNP.

Ukip: Key players

Rex Features
Chris Bruni-Lowe

Masterminded Ukip’s successful by-election campaigns in Clacton and Rochester; has been given the job of co-ordinating the election campaign. His main job will be to ensure Nigel Farage wins in  Thanet South.

Raheem Kassam

Farage’s key adviser, the former Conservative student will be with the Ukip leader for much of the campaign and help co-ordinate with party headquarters.

Paul Nuttall

Ukip deputy leader is taking charge of drive to win votes in the North of England.

Suzanne Evans

A former BBC journalist, now deputy chairman. Writing the manifesto.

Strategy

Ukip wants to make national noise to keep up its overall share of the vote, while running a Lib Dem-style targeted campaign to capture several seats in May.

Challenges

Could find itself badly squeezed as the two main parties relentless target voters, warning them that a Ukip vote would let the other party in. Ukip could seriously underperform compared with poll ratings.

SNP: Key players

Peter Morrell

Nicola Sturgeon’s  husband is the party’s  chief executive and  officially in charge of strategy over the next  five weeks.

Angus Robertson

The Europhile MP for Moray is the SNP’s campaign director,  directing resources  between its numerous target seats.

EPA
Stewart Hosie

The party’s deputy leader is taking charge of the election manifesto.

Alex Salmond

The former First Minister currently has no formal role, apart from as candidate in Gordon, but he is bound to take a high profile.

Strategy

To turn the extraordinary surge in support since last year’s referendum into votes. Will push the message that only a division of SNP MPs will pursue progressive policies – and  if that helps the rest of the UK’s left, so be it. The front-of-stage independence priority  has temporarily been  put on hold.

Challenges

The danger that serially attacking Westminster’s elite – Labour and the Tories alike – could backfire. If the main battleground issue  shifts to who should become prime minister,  the SNP could look  engaged in a side-show.  The “Scottish voice”  issue could leave it  looking parochial.

Greens: Key players

Chris Luffingham

Usually known as Billy, he is the Greens’ campaigns director. He is charged with fashioning the party’s messages and raising its media profile.

Penny Kemp

Longstanding Green activist who is the  external communications co-ordinator.

Tom Beckett

Fundraising and operations director who is in charge of raising cash for the party’s biggest campaign in its history.

Strategy

To project a left-wing appeal aimed at disillusioned Labour and Lib Dem supporters. Calling for an end to austerity, a “restoration  of the public sector”,  and defence of a publicly funded NHS, as well as serious action on climate change.

Challenges

Top priority is fighting off Labour to retain its sole seat in Brighton Pavilion;  is also targeting Bristol West and Norwich South. Leader Natalie Bennett will need to prove her credentials following accusations she is not  up to the job. Needs to avoid its voice getting drowned out in the election hubbub.

The Independent has got together with May2015.com to produce a poll of polls that produces the most up-to-date data in as close to real time as possible.

Click the buttons below to explore how the main parties’ fortunes have changed:

All data, polls and graphics are courtesy of May2015.com. Click through for daily analysis, in-depth features and all the data you need. (All historical data used is provided by UK Polling Report)

 

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- http://bit.ly/1IjSu7h

The Story Behind ‘Woman in Gold’: Nazi Art Thieves and One Painting’s Return

There are many reasons that among the hundreds of thousands of cases involving artwork looted by the Nazis the story of Gustav Klimt’s “Adele Bloch-Bauer I” would particularly appeal to filmmakers. For one, there is the mesmerizing gold-flecked painting itself, which set a record price of $135 million when it was sold in 2006. Then there is the David-and-Goliath tale featuring a feisty octogenarian heroine — Ms. Bloch-Bauer’s niece Maria Altmann — taking on a recalcitrant Austrian government. And finally there is the satisfying conclusion. Ms. Altmann gets the portrait back. Justice prevails.

Yet even today, viewers may not realize how rare such justice is when it comes to the return of art looted during the Nazis’ reign of terror to its rightful owners or — as is now more likely, seven decades later — to their descendants.

As the new film “Woman in Gold,” starring Helen Mirren as the indefatigable Maria Altmann, acknowledges in a brief written prologue before the credits roll, more than 100,000 stolen works of art are still unaccounted for.

When Ms. Altmann first sought to reclaim some of her family’s paintings in 1998, there were reasons to think that the odds of restitution — crushingly low for so long — might have finally improved. After decades of neglect or outright opposition to restitution efforts, international public opinion had finally begun to turn in the wake of post-Cold War revelations about continuing malfeasance involving Nazi plunder. Official reports commissioned by both Switzerland and the United States detailed, for example, how the Swiss had reneged on agreements to return hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of gold stolen by Nazi Germany, while Swiss banks had agreed to a $1.25 billion settlement with Holocaust survivors after being sued for their refusal to return assets deposited for safekeeping during the war. Meanwhile, a new generation, less interested in covering up historical sins, exposed the ways governments, museum officials, dealers and buyers often systematically frustrated attempts to return stolen assets and art to the original owners.

In 1998, 44 countries, including Austria, signed the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, a nonbinding agreement that called for a “just and fair solution” for Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution.

That same year, the Austrian Parliament passed a law requiring museums to open up their archives for research and to return plundered property. The legislation was spurred in part by revelations about looted art published by the journalist Hubertus Czernin, portrayed in the film by Daniel Brühl. He discovered, in the formerly sealed archives of the Austrian Gallery, evidence that the country’s claim to the Bloch-Bauer Klimts was faulty.

Several paintings, including the 1907 portrait of Adele, had been hanging in museums after their confiscation by Nazi agents. Austria had long claimed that Ms. Bloch-Bauer, who died in 1925 from meningitis, left the portrait to the country in her will. But records showed that the artwork clearly belonged to her husband, the wealthy Jewish industrialist Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, who fled his homeland in 1938. And he had left his entire estate to his heirs — one of whom was his niece Ms. Altmann — when he died in 1945.

Still, the newly created Austrian restitution panel denied Ms. Altmann’s claim. It wasn’t until 2006, after the United States Supreme Court cleared the way for Ms. Altmann, then living in California, to sue the Austrian government, that an agreement was reached. Rather than pursue a lengthy and costly trial, Ms. Altmann agreed to binding arbitration and was awarded five of six paintings that had been seized from her family.

(The painting, now in the collection of the Neue Galerie in New York, is part of a new exhibition created in conjunction with the movie. Opening on Thursday, the exhibition explores the relationship between Klimt and his patron, Ms. Bloch-Bauer.)

On the world stage, there were follow-up conferences to the Washington Principles and another agreement in 2009, but still no enforcement mechanisms. Stuart E. Eizenstat, a former special State Department envoy, who negotiated the 1998 agreement, has repeatedly complained that the hoped-for widespread restitution never occurred, because of a combination of flagging governmental pressure and a variety of legal constraints. Nations have also devoted few resources to do the painstaking provenance research that can establish ownership claims.

As recent headlines show, occasionally there is progress. Earlier this month, an El Greco seized by the Gestapo in 1938 from a Viennese industrialist was returned to his family by a dealer. And the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland, which has inherited the trove of Nazi-era art found in the Munich apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, whose father was the Nazi-era art dealer, continues to pledge to return looted works to the families of the original owners.

But restitution tends to be the exception rather than the rule. A report issued this past September by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and the World Jewish Restitution Organization concluded that most countries have done little to live up to international agreements. Italy came in for particular censure, followed by Hungary, Poland, Argentina, Spain and Russia. (The report, while noting that Germany had made some progress, still chastised the government for keeping its discovery of the Gurlitt stash secret.)

The German newspaper Der Spiegel also took successive regimes to task in 2013 when reporters revealed that the German government, both on its own and with various museums, ignored or actively frustrated restitution for decades. At the time, the paper called it “a moral disaster that began in the 1950s and continues to the present day.”

In France, fewer than 100 of the 2,000 unclaimed works of looted art that hang in the country’s museums have been returned. In 2013, the French culture minister defended the record, saying it was “not because of a lack of will on the part of museums,” but because of scattered records and the deaths of so many who were involved.

While some of Europe’s special restitution committees have facilitated the return of stolen art, other decisions have been questioned. In 2013, a Dutch panel, for example, ruled that despite evidence that a Jewish industrialist persecuted by the Nazis was forced to sell two old masters paintings under duress, the heirs’ interest in restitution “carries less weight” than the interests of the museums that currently own them.

Most recovery attempts result in failure. In general, the few successful claimants tend to have big bankrolls, meticulous records and an exceptional run of luck.

What aided in the return of Adele Bloch-Bauer’s portrait was its location in a federal museum, said E. Randol Schoenberg, Ms. Altmann’s lawyer. In most instances, he said, the missing works are in private hands, and the owners either don’t know where they are or have no way of compelling their return.

That is the case with a valuable trove of art, including three multimillion-dollar Canalettos, owned by Bernhard Altmann, Ms. Altmann’s brother-in-law, and forcibly auctioned off after the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938. “The fact is that artworks in private collections outside of the United States are almost impossible to recover,” Mr. Schoenberg (played by Ryan Reynolds in the film) said.

Even in the United States, several legal experts and Jewish groups complain that some American museums have failed to live up to promises to settle claims based on the merits, a charge vigorously denied by art institutions.

The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, for example, has spent years fighting Marei von Saher, the heir of a noted Dutch Jewish art dealer who fled after the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. She is trying to reclaim two prized paintings of Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Jonathan Petropoulos, the former research director for art and cultural property for the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets, who provided expert testimony in Ms. Altmann’s case, has labeled the response of American museums “lamentable.”

Still, publicizing the successes, however rare, is important, Mr. Schoenberg emphasized. “Each time there’s a success, it gives people more hope, and that allows the restitution efforts to continue.”

Source link

- http://bit.ly/1Mvdj6i

ArtsBeat: Rolling Stones to Tour North America This Summer

Tickets for the United States tour dates go on sale on April 13.

Source link

- http://bit.ly/1BJoeht

The Story Behind ‘Woman in Gold’: Nazi Art Thieves and One Painting’s Return

There are many reasons that among the hundreds of thousands of cases involving artwork looted by the Nazis the story of Gustav Klimt’s “Adele Bloch-Bauer I” would particularly appeal to filmmakers. For one, there is the mesmerizing gold-flecked painting itself, which set a record price of $135 million when it was sold in 2006. Then there is the David-and-Goliath tale featuring a feisty octogenarian heroine — Ms. Bloch-Bauer’s niece Maria Altmann — taking on a recalcitrant Austrian government. And finally there is the satisfying conclusion. Ms. Altmann gets the portrait back. Justice prevails.

Yet even today, viewers may not realize how rare such justice is when it comes to the return of art looted during the Nazis’ reign of terror to its rightful owners or — as is now more likely, seven decades later — to their descendants.

As the new film “Woman in Gold,” starring Helen Mirren as the indefatigable Maria Altmann, acknowledges in a brief written prologue before the credits roll, more than 100,000 stolen works of art are still unaccounted for.

When Ms. Altmann first sought to reclaim some of her family’s paintings in 1998, there were reasons to think that the odds of restitution — crushingly low for so long — might have finally improved. After decades of neglect or outright opposition to restitution efforts, international public opinion had finally begun to turn in the wake of post-Cold War revelations about continuing malfeasance involving Nazi plunder. Official reports commissioned by both Switzerland and the United States detailed, for example, how the Swiss had reneged on agreements to return hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of gold stolen by Nazi Germany, while Swiss banks had agreed to a $1.25 billion settlement with Holocaust survivors after being sued for their refusal to return assets deposited for safekeeping during the war. Meanwhile, a new generation, less interested in covering up historical sins, exposed the ways governments, museum officials, dealers and buyers often systematically frustrated attempts to return stolen assets and art to the original owners.

In 1998, 44 countries, including Austria, signed the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, a nonbinding agreement that called for a “just and fair solution” for Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution.

That same year, the Austrian Parliament passed a law requiring museums to open up their archives for research and to return plundered property. The legislation was spurred in part by revelations about looted art published by the journalist Hubertus Czernin, portrayed in the film by Daniel Brühl. He discovered, in the formerly sealed archives of the Austrian Gallery, evidence that the country’s claim to the Bloch-Bauer Klimts was faulty.

Several paintings, including the 1907 portrait of Adele, had been hanging in museums after their confiscation by Nazi agents. Austria had long claimed that Ms. Bloch-Bauer, who died in 1925 from meningitis, left the portrait to the country in her will. But records showed that the artwork clearly belonged to her husband, the wealthy Jewish industrialist Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, who fled his homeland in 1938. And he had left his entire estate to his heirs — one of whom was his niece Ms. Altmann — when he died in 1945.

Still, the newly created Austrian restitution panel denied Ms. Altmann’s claim. It wasn’t until 2006, after the United States Supreme Court cleared the way for Ms. Altmann, then living in California, to sue the Austrian government, that an agreement was reached. Rather than pursue a lengthy and costly trial, Ms. Altmann agreed to binding arbitration and was awarded five of six paintings that had been seized from her family.

(The painting, now in the collection of the Neue Galerie in New York, is part of a new exhibition created in conjunction with the movie. Opening on Thursday, the exhibition explores the relationship between Klimt and his patron, Ms. Bloch-Bauer.)

On the world stage, there were follow-up conferences to the Washington Principles and another agreement in 2009, but still no enforcement mechanisms. Stuart E. Eizenstat, a former special State Department envoy, who negotiated the 1998 agreement, has repeatedly complained that the hoped-for widespread restitution never occurred, because of a combination of flagging governmental pressure and a variety of legal constraints. Nations have also devoted few resources to do the painstaking provenance research that can establish ownership claims.

As recent headlines show, occasionally there is progress. Earlier this month, an El Greco seized by the Gestapo in 1938 from a Viennese industrialist was returned to his family by a dealer. And the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland, which has inherited the trove of Nazi-era art found in the Munich apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, whose father was the Nazi-era art dealer, continues to pledge to return looted works to the families of the original owners.

But restitution tends to be the exception rather than the rule. A report issued this past September by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and the World Jewish Restitution Organization concluded that most countries have done little to live up to international agreements. Italy came in for particular censure, followed by Hungary, Poland, Argentina, Spain and Russia. (The report, while noting that Germany had made some progress, still chastised the government for keeping its discovery of the Gurlitt stash secret.)

The German newspaper Der Spiegel also took successive regimes to task in 2013 when reporters revealed that the German government, both on its own and with various museums, ignored or actively frustrated restitution for decades. At the time, the paper called it “a moral disaster that began in the 1950s and continues to the present day.”

In France, fewer than 100 of the 2,000 unclaimed works of looted art that hang in the country’s museums have been returned. In 2013, the French culture minister defended the record, saying it was “not because of a lack of will on the part of museums,” but because of scattered records and the deaths of so many who were involved.

While some of Europe’s special restitution committees have facilitated the return of stolen art, other decisions have been questioned. In 2013, a Dutch panel, for example, ruled that despite evidence that a Jewish industrialist persecuted by the Nazis was forced to sell two old masters paintings under duress, the heirs’ interest in restitution “carries less weight” than the interests of the museums that currently own them.

Most recovery attempts result in failure. In general, the few successful claimants tend to have big bankrolls, meticulous records and an exceptional run of luck.

What aided in the return of Adele Bloch-Bauer’s portrait was its location in a federal museum, said E. Randol Schoenberg, Ms. Altmann’s lawyer. In most instances, he said, the missing works are in private hands, and the owners either don’t know where they are or have no way of compelling their return.

That is the case with a valuable trove of art, including three multimillion-dollar Canalettos, owned by Bernhard Altmann, Ms. Altmann’s brother-in-law, and forcibly auctioned off after the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938. “The fact is that artworks in private collections outside of the United States are almost impossible to recover,” Mr. Schoenberg (played by Ryan Reynolds in the film) said.

Even in the United States, several legal experts and Jewish groups complain that some American museums have failed to live up to promises to settle claims based on the merits, a charge vigorously denied by art institutions.

The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, for example, has spent years fighting Marei von Saher, the heir of a noted Dutch Jewish art dealer who fled after the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. She is trying to reclaim two prized paintings of Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Jonathan Petropoulos, the former research director for art and cultural property for the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets, who provided expert testimony in Ms. Altmann’s case, has labeled the response of American museums “lamentable.”

Still, publicizing the successes, however rare, is important, Mr. Schoenberg emphasized. “Each time there’s a success, it gives people more hope, and that allows the restitution efforts to continue.”

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