Building a reef of survivors file22/9/2017 · international edition |fridyaseptember 22, 2017,...
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.. INTERNATIONAL EDITION | FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2017 TRULY HAPPY THE DIVIDENDS OF BEING HONEST PAGE 12 | WELL MEXICO QUAKE HEARTBREAK AT HARD-HIT SCHOOL PAGE 4 | WORLD ‘GRITS? WHAT’S THAT?’ FLAVORS OF HARLEM AT A LONDON ADDRESS BACK PAGE | TRAVEL KARACHI, PAKISTAN I learned my first lesson about how babies are born from a magazine called Happy Home. It was published by a department of the Pakistani government called the Min- istry of Population. The ministry was supposed to encourage people to have fewer babies, and it went about that in a rather coy fashion. The magazine exhorted people to pace themselves; I remember it used the poetic Urdu phrase, waqfa bahut zaroori hai, “a break is impor- tant.” I was about 10, and I remem- ber even more clearly the illus- tration of a small family, a man and a woman and two chubby children, sitting around a stove and eating. I concluded that babies are conceived by sitting around a stove and eating. When the provisional results of Pakistan’s most recent census came out last month, after massive delays, they seemed to indicate that the mes- sage of Happy Home was lost on most Pakistanis, too. Pakistan’s population now exceeds 207 million, an increase of 57 percent since the last census in 1998. Pakistan has become the fifth-most populous country in the world. At this rate, the physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy has warned, in 150 years Pakistan will be a standing-room-only kind of place. Overpopulation will be a terrible strain on natural resources and state services. Already today, every eighth child in the world who is not in school lives in Pakistan. I must have read that Happy Home magazine about 40 years ago, but things haven’t changed much here when it comes to conversations about how babies are made. Despite warn- ings about a population explosion, we still don’t talk about population control. Talking about population control might require talking about sex, and you can’t really talk about sex on prime time TV or the radio, in Parliament or at village gatherings. Ads for condoms are often banned. There’s the occasional valiant attempt — like Clinic Online, a call-in TV show about sexual health — but “sex” re- mains a dirty word. As if just saying it was the same as doing it. We don’t even talk about sex with the person we’re doing it with. The Pakistani government could have involved the clergy to dispel the common myth that contraception is somehow un-Islamic, but it hasn’t. There also used to be a Let’s talk about sex, Pakistan OPINION The country’s population is exploding because the state is too coy about family planning. HANIF, PAGE 11 Mohammed Hanif Contributing Writer After a plunge beneath the crystal-clear water to inspect a coral reef, Neal Cantin pulled off his mask and shook his head. “All dead,” he said. Yet even as he and his dive team of in- ternational scientists lamented the dev- astation that human recklessness has inflicted on the world’s greatest system of reefs, they also found cause for hope. As they spent days working through a stretch of ocean off the Australian state of Queensland, Dr. Cantin and his col- leagues surfaced with sample after sam- ple of living coral that had somehow dodged a recent die-off: hardy sur- vivors, clinging to life in a graveyard. “We’re trying to find the super corals, the ones that survived the worst heat stress of their lives,” said Dr. Cantin, a researcher with the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville. The goal is not just to study them, but to find the ones with the best genes, mul- tiply them in tanks on land and ulti- mately return them to the ocean where they can continue to breed. The hope is to create tougher reefs — to accelerate evolution, essentially — and slowly build an ecosystem capable of surviving global warming and other human- caused environmental assaults. The research here is part of a world- wide push that is growing increasingly urgent. After decades of accumulating damage, followed by a huge die-off in 2015 and 2016, some scientists say they believe half the coral reefs that existed in the early 20th century are gone. Instead of standing around watching the rest of them die, a vanguard of reef experts is determined to act. In Florida, they are pioneering tech- niques that may allow the rapid re-es- tablishment of reefs killed by heat stress. In Hawaii, they are studying the biology of corals that somehow man- aged to cling to life as an earlier genera- tion of people dumped raw sewage into a magnificent bay. In the Caribbean, coun- tries are banding together to create a ge- netic storage bank for corals, a backup plan if today’s reefs all die. “We created these problems,” said Mi- chael P. Crosby, president of the Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium in Sara- sota, Fla., one of the institutions leading this work. “We have to get actively in- volved in helping the corals come back.” Yet this new push to aid the world’s reefs comes with its own risks, and with many questions. A large-scale restoration effort could be expensive, and so far, governments REEFS, PAGE 5 Collecting coral samples from the Great Barrier Reef off Queensland, Australia. Researchers are looking for the corals with the best genes, ones that have survived recent die-offs. PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVID MAURICE SMITH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Building a reef of survivors ON THE GREAT BARRIER REEF, OFF AUSTRALIA Scientists want to breed world’s hardiest corals in labs and return them to sea BY DAMIEN CAVE AND JUSTIN GILLIS Coral bred from samples collected from the Great Barrier Reef, in Townsville, Australia. This push to aid the world’s reefs comes with risks, and many questions. On the morning he disappeared, the ac- tivist Lee Ming-cheh crossed from Ma- cau into mainland China to meet with democracy advocates. It was 177 days later when he re- appeared in public, standing in the dock of a courtroom in central China last week, confessing to a conspiracy to sub- vert the Communist Party by circulating criticism on social media. The circumstances surrounding Mr. Lee’s detainment remain murky, but what has made the case stand out from the many that the Chinese government brings against its critics is that Mr. Lee is not a citizen of China, but rather of Tai- wan, the self-governing island over which Beijing claims sovereignty. The proceedings against Mr. Lee, who is expected to be sentenced as soon as this week, punctuated what critics have warned are China’s brazen efforts to ex- tend the reach of its security forces to stifle what it perceives as threats to its power emanating from overseas. In recent months alone, China has sought the extradition of ethnic Uighur students studying overseas in Egypt and carried out the seizure of a billion- aire from a Hong Kong hotel in violation of an agreement that allows the former British colony to run its own affairs. The billionaire, Xiao Jianhua, now appears to be a material witness in another polit- ically tinged investigation against the Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda. China abruptly surfaced charges of rape against yet another billionaire, Guo Wengui, after he sought political asylum in the United States, where he has been making sensational accusations about the Communist Party’s leadership. Mr. Guo’s case could become a major test for the Trump administration’s relations with Beijing at a time of tensions over North Korea and trade. “China has been extending its clamp- down — its choking of civil society — throughout the world, and often it is at- tempting this through official channels such as the U.N. or Interpol,” said Mi- chael Caster, a rights campaigner who was a co-founder of the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group. “Unfortunately, they’re very adept at doing it.” The Chinese Urgent Action Working Group, which provided seminars for lawyers and legal aid for defendants in China, folded last year after the coun- try’s powerful Ministry of State Security arrested and held Mr. Caster’s col- league, Peter Dahlin, a Swedish citizen, for 23 days. Mr. Caster noted that Inter- China’s reach extends to threats made from abroad BEIJING Nation’s clout means few countries are willing to challenge clampdown BY STEVEN LEE MYERS AND CHRIS HORTON CHINA, PAGE 2 Moses Sumney has a voice that can melt hearts: a gently grainy tenor that often ascends into an immaculate, unearthly falsetto. It’s no wonder that his first pub- lic gigs in Los Angeles, back in 2013, al- most immediately drew fellow musi- cians as well as a swarm of record-label types eager to shape his music into a commercial commodity. “A lot of people were trying to pull me in a very pop direction. That’s immedi- ately where most people saw me,” he re- called over breakfast this month at the Soho Grand in New York. Instead, he re- alized, “I didn’t have to go there. I could go weirder.” He took his time, experimented, col- laborated and followed the ideas and in- stincts that led him to the release, this week, of his debut album, “Aromanti- cism.” It’s a musical reverie that has slow-motion R&B melting into folky tranquillity and undulating loops. “There’s a feeling I wanted to capture on this record,” he said. “That moment as you’re falling asleep, or right when you wake up, when you’re still one foot in and one foot out of the dream world, and everything is really murky and you feel like you’re floating.” At times, Mr. Sumney lets his voice hover exposed and nearly alone, set above the most minimal accompani- ment. He also layers his vocals into cas- cading, convoluted harmonies and brings in glimmers of lush string ensem- bles and subtle funk. Filtering into the music, he freely acknowledged, are ech- oes of Nina Simone, Kanye West, Björk, Joanna Newsom, the psych-folk song- writer Linda Perhacs and the Brazilian songwriter Milton Nascimento, among many others. The lyrics hold declara- tions, impressions, conversations and memories; the songs drift into one an- other, for an album meant to be heard as a whole. Within the sensual haze, there’s Dreamy, but he doesn’t sing love songs Moses Sumney’s album, “Aromanticism,” examines how culture idealizes love. “I was just bored with the love song, the idea of the love song as the archetype,” he said. ELIZABETH WEINBERG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES SINGER, PAGE 2 In his debut album, Moses Sumney questions our fixation on romance BY JON PARELES Apply to attend: nytluxury.com INTERNATIONAL LUXURY CONFERENCE WHAT’S NEXT: LUXURY IN A TURBULENT WORLD NOV. 13–14, 2017 BRUSSELS Principal Sponsor Issue Number No. 41,843 Andorra € 3.60 Antilles € 3.90 Austria € 3.20 Bahrain BD 1.20 Belgium €3.20 Bos. & Herz. 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Transcript of Building a reef of survivors file22/9/2017 · international edition |fridyaseptember 22, 2017,...
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INTERNATIONAL EDITION | FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2017
TRULY HAPPYTHE DIVIDENDSOF BEING HONESTPAGE 12 | WELL
MEXICO QUAKEHEARTBREAK ATHARD-HIT SCHOOLPAGE 4 | WORLD
‘GRITS? WHAT’S THAT?’FLAVORS OF HARLEMAT A LONDON ADDRESSBACK PAGE | TRAVEL
KARACHI, PAKISTAN I learned my firstlesson about how babies are born froma magazine called Happy Home. It waspublished by a department of thePakistani government called the Min-istry of Population. The ministry wassupposed to encourage people to havefewer babies, and it went about that ina rather coy fashion.
The magazine exhorted people topace themselves; I remember it usedthe poetic Urdu phrase, waqfa bahut
zaroori hai, “abreak is impor-tant.” I was about10, and I remem-ber even moreclearly the illus-tration of a smallfamily, a manand a womanand two chubbychildren, sittingaround a stove
and eating. I concluded that babies areconceived by sitting around a stoveand eating.
When the provisional results ofPakistan’s most recent census cameout last month, after massive delays,they seemed to indicate that the mes-sage of Happy Home was lost on mostPakistanis, too. Pakistan’s populationnow exceeds 207 million, an increase of57 percent since the last census in 1998.Pakistan has become the fifth-mostpopulous country in the world.
At this rate, the physicist PervezHoodbhoy has warned, in 150 yearsPakistan will be a standing-room-onlykind of place. Overpopulation will be aterrible strain on natural resourcesand state services. Already today,every eighth child in the world who isnot in school lives in Pakistan.
I must have read that Happy Homemagazine about 40 years ago, butthings haven’t changed much herewhen it comes to conversations abouthow babies are made. Despite warn-ings about a population explosion, westill don’t talk about population control.Talking about population control mightrequire talking about sex, and youcan’t really talk about sex on primetime TV or the radio, in Parliament orat village gatherings.
Ads for condoms are often banned.There’s the occasional valiant attempt— like Clinic Online, a call-in TV showabout sexual health — but “sex” re-mains a dirty word. As if just saying itwas the same as doing it. We don’teven talk about sex with the personwe’re doing it with. The Pakistanigovernment could have involved theclergy to dispel the common myth thatcontraception is somehow un-Islamic,but it hasn’t. There also used to be a
Let’s talk about sex,Pakistan
OPINION
The country’spopulationis explodingbecause thestate is too coyabout familyplanning.
HANIF, PAGE 11
Mohammed HanifContributing Writer
After a plunge beneath the crystal-clearwater to inspect a coral reef, Neal Cantinpulled off his mask and shook his head.
“All dead,” he said.Yet even as he and his dive team of in-
ternational scientists lamented the dev-astation that human recklessness hasinflicted on the world’s greatest systemof reefs, they also found cause for hope.
As they spent days working through astretch of ocean off the Australian stateof Queensland, Dr. Cantin and his col-leagues surfaced with sample after sam-ple of living coral that had somehowdodged a recent die-off: hardy sur-vivors, clinging to life in a graveyard.
“We’re trying to find the super corals,the ones that survived the worst heatstress of their lives,” said Dr. Cantin, aresearcher with the Australian Institute
of Marine Science in Townsville.The goal is not just to study them, but
to find the ones with the best genes, mul-tiply them in tanks on land and ulti-mately return them to the ocean wherethey can continue to breed. The hope is
to create tougher reefs — to accelerateevolution, essentially — and slowlybuild an ecosystem capable of survivingglobal warming and other human-caused environmental assaults.
The research here is part of a world-
wide push that is growing increasinglyurgent. After decades of accumulatingdamage, followed by a huge die-off in2015 and 2016, some scientists say theybelieve half the coral reefs that existedin the early 20th century are gone.
Instead of standing around watchingthe rest of them die, a vanguard of reefexperts is determined to act.
In Florida, they are pioneering tech-niques that may allow the rapid re-es-tablishment of reefs killed by heatstress. In Hawaii, they are studying thebiology of corals that somehow man-aged to cling to life as an earlier genera-tion of people dumped raw sewage into amagnificent bay. In the Caribbean, coun-tries are banding together to create a ge-netic storage bank for corals, a backupplan if today’s reefs all die.
“We created these problems,” said Mi-chael P. Crosby, president of the MoteMarine Laboratory & Aquarium in Sara-sota, Fla., one of the institutions leadingthis work. “We have to get actively in-volved in helping the corals come back.”
Yet this new push to aid the world’sreefs comes with its own risks, and withmany questions.
A large-scale restoration effort couldbe expensive, and so far, governments REEFS, PAGE 5
Collecting coral samples from the Great Barrier Reef off Queensland, Australia. Researchers are looking for the corals with the best genes, ones that have survived recent die-offs.PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVID MAURICE SMITH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Building a reef of survivorsON THE GREAT BARRIER REEF, OFF AUSTRALIA
Scientists want to breedworld’s hardiest corals inlabs and return them to sea
BY DAMIEN CAVEAND JUSTIN GILLIS
Coral bred from samples collected from the Great Barrier Reef, in Townsville, Australia.This push to aid the world’s reefs comes with risks, and many questions.
On the morning he disappeared, the ac-tivist Lee Ming-cheh crossed from Ma-cau into mainland China to meet withdemocracy advocates.
It was 177 days later when he re-appeared in public, standing in the dockof a courtroom in central China lastweek, confessing to a conspiracy to sub-vert the Communist Party by circulatingcriticism on social media.
The circumstances surrounding Mr.Lee’s detainment remain murky, butwhat has made the case stand out fromthe many that the Chinese governmentbrings against its critics is that Mr. Leeis not a citizen of China, but rather of Tai-wan, the self-governing island overwhich Beijing claims sovereignty.
The proceedings against Mr. Lee, whois expected to be sentenced as soon asthis week, punctuated what critics havewarned are China’s brazen efforts to ex-tend the reach of its security forces tostifle what it perceives as threats to itspower emanating from overseas.
In recent months alone, China hassought the extradition of ethnic Uighurstudents studying overseas in Egyptand carried out the seizure of a billion-aire from a Hong Kong hotel in violationof an agreement that allows the formerBritish colony to run its own affairs. Thebillionaire, Xiao Jianhua, now appearsto be a material witness in another polit-ically tinged investigation against theChinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda.
China abruptly surfaced charges ofrape against yet another billionaire, GuoWengui, after he sought political asylumin the United States, where he has beenmaking sensational accusations aboutthe Communist Party’s leadership. Mr.Guo’s case could become a major test forthe Trump administration’s relationswith Beijing at a time of tensions overNorth Korea and trade.
“China has been extending its clamp-down — its choking of civil society —throughout the world, and often it is at-tempting this through official channelssuch as the U.N. or Interpol,” said Mi-chael Caster, a rights campaigner whowas a co-founder of the Chinese UrgentAction Working Group. “Unfortunately,they’re very adept at doing it.”
The Chinese Urgent Action WorkingGroup, which provided seminars forlawyers and legal aid for defendants inChina, folded last year after the coun-try’s powerful Ministry of State Securityarrested and held Mr. Caster’s col-league, Peter Dahlin, a Swedish citizen,for 23 days. Mr. Caster noted that Inter-
China’s reachextends to threats made from abroadBEIJING
Nation’s clout means few countries are willing to challenge clampdown
BY STEVEN LEE MYERSAND CHRIS HORTON
CHINA, PAGE 2
Moses Sumney has a voice that can melthearts: a gently grainy tenor that oftenascends into an immaculate, unearthlyfalsetto. It’s no wonder that his first pub-lic gigs in Los Angeles, back in 2013, al-most immediately drew fellow musi-cians as well as a swarm of record-labeltypes eager to shape his music into acommercial commodity.
“A lot of people were trying to pull mein a very pop direction. That’s immedi-ately where most people saw me,” he re-called over breakfast this month at theSoho Grand in New York. Instead, he re-alized, “I didn’t have to go there. I couldgo weirder.”
He took his time, experimented, col-laborated and followed the ideas and in-stincts that led him to the release, thisweek, of his debut album, “Aromanti-
cism.” It’s a musical reverie that hasslow-motion R&B melting into folkytranquillity and undulating loops.“There’s a feeling I wanted to capture onthis record,” he said. “That moment asyou’re falling asleep, or right when youwake up, when you’re still one foot inand one foot out of the dream world, andeverything is really murky and you feellike you’re floating.”
At times, Mr. Sumney lets his voicehover exposed and nearly alone, setabove the most minimal accompani-ment. He also layers his vocals into cas-cading, convoluted harmonies andbrings in glimmers of lush string ensem-bles and subtle funk. Filtering into themusic, he freely acknowledged, are ech-oes of Nina Simone, Kanye West, Björk,Joanna Newsom, the psych-folk song-writer Linda Perhacs and the Braziliansongwriter Milton Nascimento, amongmany others. The lyrics hold declara-tions, impressions, conversations andmemories; the songs drift into one an-other, for an album meant to be heard asa whole. Within the sensual haze, there’s
Dreamy, but he doesn’t sing love songs
Moses Sumney’s album, “Aromanticism,” examines how culture idealizes love. “I wasjust bored with the love song, the idea of the love song as the archetype,” he said.
ELIZABETH WEINBERG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
SINGER, PAGE 2
In his debut album, Moses Sumney questionsour fixation on romance
BY JON PARELES
Apply to attend:
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