2022年6月17日 星期五

The Daily: When Satellites Capture a Crisis

How digital data is filling the gaps in war coverage.

Welcome to the weekend. This week on the show, we explored how even though troves of data are coming out of Ukraine, getting to the truth is hard.

"Everyone always thinks that with technological advances that we get a better understanding of war," Julian E. Barnes, a national security reporter for The New York Times, said this week. "But it's a bit of an illusion. The fog of war still exists. We still have imperfect information."

To explore this idea in greater depth, we wanted to look at the gaps in information coming out of another, less-covered war. In this newsletter, we revisit the latest updates on the war in Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, since we last covered the conflict on the show.

The big idea: How satellite imagery is helping tell the story of war

The Daily strives to reveal a new idea in every episode. Below, we go deeper on one of those from our show this week on gaps in intelligence gathering in conflict zones.

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Rebels surveyed the wreckage of a military plane downed by their forces south of Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, in June 2021.Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

It was just after midnight in March 2021, and Emnet Negash was worried about home.

As a doctoral student in Belgium, he was far from his family in Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, where a civil war was raging in the dark — cut off from the rest of the world by a strict communications blackout imposed by the government. He wondered if his family was safe, and if his hometown, Adigrat, was still standing.

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So he opened Google Maps. Zooming in, he saw debris scattered across town and buildings partially or completely missing, the altered aerial outlines of what once was a hotel, a public library, an office for humanitarian assistance. He feared it was evidence of fire and destruction.

"I saw what appeared to be the total collapse of some buildings," he said. "It was unimaginable. I couldn't work for a couple of days."

He later published his findings with his geography colleagues at the University of Ghent, using satellite imagery to document the ruinous effects of the war. They are one of the few teams in the world dedicated to gathering and publishing remote sensing data about the conflict — and its impact on the land, cities and people living in northern Ethiopia. Their work, along with citizen reporting and dispatches from journalists, has formed a patchwork sense of what is happening in the region — one that is incomplete.

Below, we share what we know about the latest updates on the war from their work and from Times journalists who have reported from the front lines of the conflict.

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Why is Ethiopia still at war with itself?

As a refresher: Ethiopia is experiencing a brutal civil war. The deadly conflict in the nation, Africa's second most populous, has pitted the national military against rebels in the northern region of Tigray.

The Tigray make up about 6 percent of Ethiopia's 110 million people, and they were the arbiters of power and money in the country from 1991, when they helped dismantle a military dictatorship, until 2018, when anti-government protests catapulted Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to power.

In November 2020, Abiy, winner of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, launched a surprise military offensive in Tigray — one that an internal U.S. government report described as a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing. The ensuing conflict has left thousands dead, forced more than two million people from their homes and pushed parts of the country into famine-like conditions.

In the time since, the tide of the civil war has fluctuated wildly. The government teetered in early November 2021 when fighters from Tigray surged south toward the capital, Addis Ababa, forcing Abiy to declare a state of emergency. Foreigners fled the country, and the government detained thousands of civilians from the Tigrayan ethnic group.

How satellites are filling gaps in information

Throughout the war, accessing accurate information about the conflict has been difficult at best, as a communications blackout has left most of the Tigray region without access to cell service or internet access.

The blockade has made it challenging for researchers to verify the destruction they are seeing on satellite imagery — or to determine who specifically was responsible for it.

"All we have is satellites," Negash said. "What we really need is reporting on the ground."

The government has tried to limit critical coverage of the conflict with a campaign of arrests, intimidation and obstruction targeting foreign journalists. While two Times journalists, Declan Walsh and Finnbar O'Reilly, gained access to Tigray and were able to independently verify reports leaking out of the region, few foreign journalists have made it into the country — or have made it out without being detained.

The threats extend to civilians, limiting access to videos or images taken on cellphones.

"I have tried to ask my colleagues at Mekelle University if they would travel around Tigray and verify what we are seeing from remote sensing," Jan Nyssen, a professor of geography at Ghent University, said. (Mekelle is the capital of the region that Ethiopian forces left last summer.) "But it is too dangerous, they cannot leave their families. It's not certain they would return."

Aid worker access has been limited at times to a single, dangerous road into the region. Earlier this year, three employees of Doctors Without Borders were killed while working in the region, underscoring the threats to providing needed assistance in a region facing widespread food insecurity and starvation.

It's a scale of need the team at Ghent University can only guess at, using their satellite imagery to deduce the scale of damage to irrigation infrastructure and the visibly altered landscape where crops once grew.

In the meantime, they scour social media and wait for patchy calls from the region for clues of how their friends and families are doing.

"People will go to the mountain tops on the border to get mobile access," Nyssen said. "It's dangerous, and it often drops out after only a couple words."

Still, he said, Tigrayans "will travel, hike and call just to say, 'We are dying.'"

The season finale of Still Processing

Reunited at last, J Wortham joins Wesley Morris in the studio for the last episode of the season. They reflect on the challenges of being apart for almost a year while J was on book leave.

How did J deal with the inevitable stretches of loneliness? How do you re-enter your home and your relationships after so much time away?

J and Wesley discuss how they managed to stay connected over the past year, and the role of community and intimacy in moments of tragedy.

On The Daily this week

Monday: How information gaps could have serious implications for the war in Ukraine.

Tuesday: An interview with Senator Chris Murphy on the bipartisan gun safety deal.

Wednesday: Can the Federal Reserve and the White House tamp down inflation without sending the U.S. economy into a recession?

Thursday: What are the origins and symptoms of monkeypox — and what is America's plan to try to contain the outbreak?

Friday: What the Jan. 6 hearings have revealed so far.

That's it for the Daily newsletter. See you next week.

Have thoughts about the show? Tell us what you think at thedaily@nytimes.com.

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2022年6月15日 星期三

The T List: Five things we recommend this week

Vibrant enamel pitchers, a luxury hotel in Australia — and more.

Welcome to the T List, a newsletter from the editors of T Magazine. Each week, we share things we're eating, wearing, listening to or coveting now. Sign up here to find us in your inbox every Wednesday. And you can always reach us at tlist@nytimes.com.

VISIT THIS

A Luxury Hotel in Australia's Southern Highlands

A suite at Osborn House, featuring a headboard upholstered in Pierre Frey fabric and a lamp made from plaster by the Australian interior designer Lucy Montgomery.Alan Jensen

By Gisela Williams

T Contributing Editor

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When the London-based former Soho House design director Linda Boronkay first visited Osborn House, a 19th-century former guesthouse located in an Australian village halfway between Sydney and Canberra, she was instantly enchanted. Even in their overgrown state, she said, the gardens and surrounding forest held an atmosphere of Old World romance and discovery. "I intervened as little as possible," she said about the process of turning the property into an intimate boutique resort. Fifteen unique suites were created in the main house, and seven cabins were scattered in the surrounding woods. When it came to the interiors, which include a game room and plant-filled spa, the designer sourced from a mix of European fabrics and Australian artisans, including the local ceramist Bruce Pryor, who crafted some of the lighting, and the Byron Bay-based artist Jai Vasicek, whose paintings and murals of muse-like female figures are found throughout the space. The result is Cotswolds manor meets Oz. "I want people to forget that they are in a hotel," Boronkay says. And the food is unfussy but delicious, as the chef, Segundo Farrell, trained under the Argentine barbecue master Francis Mallmann and typically cooks elements of a dish, like charred cabbage with grapefruit, over an open fire. Rooms from about $463, osbornhouse.com.au.

BUY THIS

Cheerful Pitchers for a Summer Table

The Danish artist Jens Quistgaard's Kobenstyle enamel pitchers for Dansk have been reissued in their original colors.Mark Weinberg/Dansk

Dansk — the Scandinavian-inflected American design brand founded in 1954 by Martha and Ted Nierenberg, a pair of New Yorkers who were besotted with Copenhagen — is perhaps best known for its colorful enamel Kobenstyle casseroles, their lids doubling as trivets, and some remarkable collaborators: the fashion photographer Bert Stern shot ads; Andy Warhol made marketing materials. Then there's the Danish artist Jens Quistgaard, who helped Dansk create thousands of popular midcentury products, many of which have become heirloom collectibles over the last 70 years. Now, some of the most memorable ones are being resurrected by the culinary website Food52, which, after acquiring Dansk last year, began researching the best pieces to reproduce from the archives and commissioning contemporary collaborators, including the designers Ilse Crawford and John Derian. First up, the brand is reissuing a large version of Quistgaard's Kobenstyle enamel water pitcher (available this week in its original red, teal, yellow and white shades) with a retro hourglass shape and braided rattan handle. "The beauty of Dansk designs is that they're so timeless," says Amanda Hesser, the founder and C.E.O. of Food52. "Today, it feels like there's a lot of stuff coming at us, but these are things that can stay with people for a long time." $95, food52.com.

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WEAR THIS

Grecian Sandals Millenniums in the Making

Ancient Greek's Victory of Samothrace sandal (left), inspired by the sculpture of the same name at the Louvre (right).Left: courtesy of the brand. Right: © Musée du Louvre, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Michel Urtado/Tony Querrec/Benoît Touchard/Art Resource, NY 

By Megan O'Sullivan

T Contributor

For their 10th-anniversary capsule collection, Ancient Greek Sandals' co-founders, Christina Martini and Nikolas Minoglou, turned to their most reliable source of inspiration: ancient Greek statues. With help from the Paris-based art historian Xenija Ventikou, a friend of theirs, they zeroed in on 10 specific works — from the "Winged Victory of Samothrace," from the Hellenistic era, which can be seen at the Louvre, to the Bell-Shaped Female Figurine from the late Geometric period, part of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts's permanent collection — to create 10 special-edition shoe designs. "This is the idea we felt most emotional about," says Martini. "And there's a parallelism — Greek art can be found in museums everywhere, and our sandals have been worn by women all around the world." One design is modeled after the Altes Museum's Berlin Kore — a free-standing statue from the Archaic period of a female figure wearing a pleated mantle — and has interlocking and subtly striped embroidered straps. Another, which nods to the Louvre's Loutrophoros Sphinx, a painted red clay vase that dates to the Seventh century B.C., features a string of reddish ceramic beads made by the ceramist Elpida Kourtzi. But while these works have a universal appeal, the brand, as usual, worked with a team of local artisans to bring the collection to life. "We could go elsewhere to manufacture our sandals for cheaper," Minoglou says, "but we think it's important to stay close to our roots." From $365, ancient-greek-sandals.com.

EAT THIS

Vegetarian Food in a Friendly Marseille Setting

Left: at La Famille Marseille, in the French city, a corner of the restaurant displays several vintage lamps from the owner's collection. Right: pizza with zucchini flowers, fior di latte mozzarella and slivers of preserved lemons.Corinne Malet

By Gisela Williams

T Contributing Editor

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Born in Marseille, France, the jewelry designer turned restaurateur Stéphanie Giribone raised her two children, along with her French Algerian husband, Mohamed Zefifene, in Marrakesh for over a decade. It was there, in 2016, that she created La Famille, a glamorously bohemian vegetarian cafe in a lush garden surrounded by whitewashed walls hidden within the medina's maze. When she and her family returned to her native city during the pandemic, she brought the concept along, and this past spring debuted La Famille Marseille in a ground-floor apartment, located in the Quartier des Antiquaires, with an open kitchen and a small courtyard with a fig tree. The interiors are decorated with vintage furniture, potted plants and shelves of lamps with macramé shades. Like the original cafe, it's open for lunch (and serves dinner two Saturday evenings a month), offering a daily changing menu of three or four vegetarian dishes. In Morocco the recipes are inspired by France, but at the Marseille location, they are typically Mediterranean with a Moroccan twist — pasta served with truffle, dried figs, grilled artichoke and za'atar, or pizza with zucchini flowers and slivers of preserved lemons — a bit like the city itself. A cookbook (in French and English) will be out in July and available for purchase at the restaurant. 36 rue Edmond Rostand, Marseille, 011-33-49-15-82-611, instagram.com/la_famille_marseille.

COVET THIS

Posh Pet Accessories From Celine

Clockwise from top: Celine by Hedi Slimane collar, $690, dog bowl, $1,950, leash, $365, bag, $2,250, and leash, $365; celine.com.Courtesy of the brand

It only took a year and a half of life with his new golden doodle, Elvis, before Celine's creative director, Hedi Slimane, launched a selection of pet accessories. An expansion of the French luxury house's Maison line of home and travel items, the collection includes collars and leashes in refined calfskin and canvas, either in tan or black, and with the option of metallic studs. Additionally, there are single or double food and water bowls wrapped in the house's Triomphe print, as well as a rubber toy in the same signature shape. Pet parents can cart these accessories for their fuzzy one in travel bags stamped with "Dog" or "Cat." The honey-colored pup modeling the pieces in Celine's ads? None other than Elvis himself. From $175, celine.com.

FROM T'S INSTAGRAM

Dining Alfresco

A candle-lit dinner in Fiona Corsini di San Giuliano's villa courtyard, with the Florentine countryside beyond the wall.Photograph by Simon Watson. Produced by Marella Caracciolo Chia

Warm weather means long, meandering meals enjoyed in the open air. For a series of dreamy outdoor dining spaces, from the Lrnce designer Lee Lenert's terrace in Morocco — appointed with string lights and a table of her own design — to the limestone courtyard of the Guadalajara, Mexico-based architect Hugo Gonzalez's late 1980s-era home, Casa Padilla, follow us on Instagram.

Correction: Last week's newsletter misstated the brand names for two watch companies; they are Wittnauer and Heuer, not Wittnauer Geneve and Jack Heuer.

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