India’s digital content market has seen an influx of several players, foreign and local, in recent years. But with the medium still pretty new to the country, most are still experimenting with content.Amazon Prime Video, the online video-on-demand service of the world’s largest online retailer, is no different.Since it entered India in December 2016, the over-the-top (OTT) platform has experimented with a series of genres, including reality TV. It has even created original content for India, including in some local languages.By the end of 2017, Prime held nearly 10% of India’s OTT streaming market with over 610,000 subscribers.The platform plans to launch some 10 original Indian series over the next one year, including in local languages like Tamil and reality shows like Hear Me, Love Me featuring Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty.Quartz spoke to Vijay Subramaniam, director and head of content at Amazon Prime Video, India, about what Indians like and the company’s strategy here. Edited excerpts:What kind of content are Indians coming to digital platforms for?A couple of things…including some pretty obvious trends like their love for movies…what kind of movies they want to watch. Viewers want the latest stuff and they want it as soon as it can be made available. So we built our catalogue accordingly.Another thing Indians want is high-quality fiction cinematic experience that is limited in episodes and has multiple seasons, with great production quality. So we saw an opportunity there and dug our heels right in. Within that, while we are building fiction, we also explored the role of unscripted or reality TV, especially among youngsters. Comicstaan is a great example of how we looked at comedy.We have more such unscripted shows we will announce shortly, catering to themes that young adults in India care about.What are some of the themes that have worked for Prime Video so far?Viewers love comedy. Within comedy, there are multiple genres that people are telling us they love. For example, stand-up is very popular here.Second, is cinematic quality and storytelling. The expectation is that the presentation should be cinematic in nature. The third thing we have picked up is that variety means different things to different people. Variety is what sticks with Indian viewers. They want a bit of everything…So we make sure we don’t over-index on any one genre.What is Prime Video’s content strategy for India?(It) will keep evolving as we are just getting started.Having said that, what we really did commit to initially was being a premium entertainment destination. Within that, we looked at originals and committed to them.The second part of our strategy is to be able to serve customers in a locally relevant manner. We have content in five Indian languages today and we will go deeper. We launched our first Telugu series in June as a test, and we will launch a Tamil series in the fourth quarter of this year.We are picking more cues on what stays and what changes. In some cases, we are even able to double down; comedy being a case in point. You will see us do comedy in both the fiction and the unscripted space.How open are big production houses and film stars to OTT platforms now?We were fortunate with the enthusiasm that (content) creators demonstrated when we came to India. Be it senior comics or seasoned producers like Excel Entertainment (a production house) or Kabir Khan productions, they all came forward very enthusiastically. That allowed a lot many people to come to us with the conviction that this is the bold new way to tell diverse stories.Do you think you have been late to get on to original content compared to Netflix?This is exactly how we planned it. Look, it takes anywhere between 18 to 24 months to put a series out because this is high-quality production and the writing process is demanding. We expect this to get better as creators and creative ecosystems start handling more volumes of such work.Will Amazon reduce prices or bifurcate its price points going forward?We are happy with where we are right now, we are just getting started. The distribution piece is an interesting and important one, our goal is to get Amazon Prime to customers at their convenience. Our focus always remains on the value we are able to provide to the customer.

The 17tn US gallons of rain (roughly 26m Olympic swimming pools) dumped on Texas by Hurricane Harvey has set a new high for a tropical system in the US, but it is unlikely to last long as rising man-made emissions push the global climate deeper into uncharted territory.Images of flooded streets in Texas are mirrored by scenes of inundated communities in India and Bangladesh, the recent mudslides in Sierra Leone and last month’s deadly overflow of a Yangtze tributary in China. In part, these calamities are seasonal. In part, the impact depends on local factors. But scientists tell us such extremes are likely to become more common and more devastating as a result of rising global temperatures and increasingly intense rainfall.Our planet is in an era of unwelcome records. For each of the past three years, temperatures have hit peaks not seen since the birth of meteorology, and probably not for more than 110,000 years. The amount of carbon dioxide in the air is at its highest level in 4m years.This does not cause storms like Harvey – there have always been storms and hurricanes at this time of year along the Gulf of Mexico – but it makes them wetter and more powerful. As the seas warm, they evaporate more easily and provide energy to storm fronts. As the air above them warms, it holds more water vapour. For every half a degree celsius in warming, there is about a 3% increase in atmospheric moisture content. Scientists call this the Clausius-Clapeyron equation. This means the skies fill more quickly and have more to dump. In Harvey’s case, the surface temperature in the Gulf of Mexico is more than a degree higher than 30 years ago.Yes, the storm surge was greater because sea levels have risen 20cm as a result of more than 100 years of human-related global warming. This has melted glaciers and thermally expanded the volume of seawater.As the rain in Texas moved towards the 120cm US record set in 1978, the nation’s meteorologists have had to introduce a new colour for their charts. It may not be the last revision.“For large countries like the United States, we can expect further rainfall records – and not just for hurricanes,” said Friederike Otto, deputy director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford. This is part of a wider trend. “For the globe, we’ll see heat and extreme rainfall records fall for the foreseeable future,” she predicted.She cautioned that the situation is likely to be different from country to country. Many factors are involved, but human impact on the climate has added to the tendency for more severe droughts and fiercer storms.High tides have added to the unusually harsh monsoon flooding in India and Bangladesh that has killed about 1,000 people in recent weeks and forced millions from their homes.Climatologists are able to attribute with growing accuracy the impact of human emissions on extreme weather events, but much remains uncertain. A key focus now is whether climate change is connected to the “stalling” of storms. In the US, hurricanes usually move inland and diminish in power as they get further from the sea. Harvey, however, was stationary for several days – which is the main factor in its rainfall record.Scientists have said this may be the single biggest question posed by Harvey. “I’m not aware of anyone asking this before. I’m not sure anyone would have predicted this kind of event,” said Tim Palmer a Royal Society research professor at the University of Oxford. Researchers have recently identified a slowdown of atmospheric summer circulation in the mid-latitudes as a result of strong warming in the Arctic. But Palmer said such studies of pressure patterns need more powerful analytical tools, including supercomputers.In the US, however, such research has become highly politicised. President Donald Trump claims climate change is a myth invented by China. He has announced that the US will pull out of the Paris climate treaty and cut funding for related research.“It shouldn’t be a political matter to try to understand how much more frequent events like Harvey will become in the future,” said Palmer. “It appalls me how basic science has become embroiled in politics like this.” Topics Hurricane Harvey Flooding Natural disasters and extreme weather analysis

FILE PHOTO - An Australian (2nd L) and a Brazilian (2nd R) flags are pictured on the entrance of the mine operator Samarco owned by Vale SA and BHP Billiton Ltd in Mariana, Brazil, November 11, 2015. REUTERS/Ricardo MoraesSAO PAULO/RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazilian prosecutors in Minas Gerais state said on Tuesday they reached a final compensation deal with mining companies Samarco, Vale (VALE3.SA) and BHP Billiton (BHP.AX) regarding a 2015 dam burst, Brazil’s largest ever environmental disaster. According to a statement from prosecutors released late on Tuesday, the deal allows for compensation payments to start to relatives of the 19 people killed in the disaster, as well as to people who lost their houses and other properties. No financial details of the deal were disclosed in the short statement on Tuesday, but the chief prosecutor in the city of Mariana will hold a press conference on Wednesday to discuss the agreement. Brazil’s worst environmental catastrophe happened when a dam designed to hold back mine waste from the Samarco iron pellets operation in Mariana burst, leaving a trail of destruction for hundreds of kilometers in Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo states. Another deal had been reached by the mining companies and prosecutors in regions hit by the disaster away from Mariana, where victims found that offer insufficient. With this last settlement, companies might be able to prepare to resume operations in the region more than two years after the accident. Vale has said it expects the Samarco unit to resume operations in 2018 or early next year, but has pushed back forecasts several times. The mine still needs permits to reopen, and the lack of a clear timeline makes it harder for the controlling companies to renegotiate the debt Samarco will carry from the disaster. Reporting by Marta Nogueira and Marcelo Teixeira; Editing by Toni Reinhold and Richard PullinOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Mr. Khalilzad said the Taliban’s red line in the recent talks remained an agreement over the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan. The United States, on the other hand, wants assurances that Afghanistan will not become a haven for terrorists who want to target the United States.The Taliban regime had hosted members of Al Qaeda, including its leader, Osama bin Laden, who was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.“I said that if the menace of terrorism is tackled, the United States is not looking for a permanent military presence in Afghanistan,” Mr. Khalilzad told ToloNews.In recent months, American diplomats have been in a hurry to start negotiations for a political end to the Afghan war largely out of concern that President Trump, who has expressed dismay at the American presence in the country, was losing patience. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump overruled the advice of his military and civilian officials to order the withdrawal of American troops from the conflict in Syria.The Americans’ urgency has not gone down well with the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, whose administration fears it is being sidelined in talks by Mr. Khalilzad. The morning after Mr. Khalilzad briefed the Afghan leader, Mr. Ghani’s national security adviser, Hamdullah Mohib, wrote a series of messages on Twitter that many read as a reflection of the government’s displeasure with the American envoy’s efforts.“As a sovereign country, no other country or individual has the right or the authority to discuss new governance formulas or structures for Afghanistan, including political dispensations, which violate the Afghan constitution,” Mr. Mohib wrote.“The authority to make any decision about Afghanistan’s future lies with the Afghan people and their elected leaders. There is no substitute for an elected government. There will be no deal over the sacrifices of the Afghan people,” he added.Mr. Khalilzad, in response, said the talks in the U.A.E. had not discussed “any single thing about the future political settlement, like an interim administration in Afghanistan.” All those were issues that the Afghans needed to resolve among themselves, he said.

NEW DELHI — A building collapsed Thursday morning during a period of heavy rainfall in Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, killing at least 14 people and injuring 15, a local official said. Rescuers continued to search into the afternoon for an unknown number of people still trapped in the rubble.The five-story building on Pakmodia Street, a busy section of the Bhindi Bazaar area in the south of the city, was about 100 years old.It was part of a redevelopment project in the area that called for demolishing a dozen old structures, then providing housing in new ones for the residents, said Atul Shah, a spokesman for the governing Bharatiya Janata Party in the state of Maharashtra, which includes Mumbai.Two years ago, a private trust was given the responsibility of moving residents and beginning the renovation, but the work was never completed, Mr. Shah said. “This was sheer negligence,” he said.ImageRescue workers searching the rubble for survivors on Thursday. Heavy rainfall may have contributed to the collapse.CreditPunit Paranjpe/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe collapse is the latest in a series of disasters involving substandard buildings in the city. In July, the police in Mumbai arrested a man accused of making illegal alterations to a five-story building that collapsed, killing 17. In 2013, at least 60 people died when a decrepit building weakened by basement work collapsed in the city.Such catastrophes have been linked to the weak enforcement of regulations and dangerous structural modifications made to compensate for a shortage of housing space.Heavy rainfall in Mumbai may have been a factor in the most recent collapse. India’s National Disaster Response Force had sent hundreds of personnel to the city to respond to flooding this week. Some of those emergency responders helped firefighters search for survivors on Thursday.ImageThe body of a victim being carried out from the site of the building collapse. At least 14 people were killed.CreditRafiq Maqbool/Associated Press

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations human rights chief said on Monday that Venezuelan security forces may have committed crimes against humanity against protesters and called for an international investigation. Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights arrives at the 36th Session of the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland September 11, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse But Venezuela’s foreign minister defended the record of the government of President Nicolas Maduro, rejecting the allegations as “baseless”. Venezuela has been convulsed by months of demonstrations against the leftist president who critics say has plunged the oil-rich country into the worst economic crisis in its history and is turning it into a dictatorship. “My investigation suggests the possibility that crimes against humanity may have been committed, which can only be confirmed by a subsequent criminal investigation,” Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein told the U.N. Human Rights Council. He said the government was using criminal proceedings against opposition leaders, arbitrary detentions, excessive use of force and ill-treatment of detainees, in some cases amounting to torture. Last month, Zeid’s office said Venezuela’s security forces had committed extensive and apparently deliberate human rights violations in crushing anti-government protests and that democracy was “barely alive”. “There is a very real danger that tensions will further escalate, with the government crushing democratic institutions and critical voices,” Zeid said. The opposition, which boycotted the election for the Constituent Assembly, has accused electoral authorities of inflating turn-out figures for the July 30 vote. However, Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza told the Geneva forum: “We have now selected the National Constituent Assembly, this is the true expression of our citizens’ will. It will have the powers to draw up a new Constitution.” “The opposition in Venezuela is back on the path of rule of law and democracy, we will see dialogue emerging thanks to mediation of our friends,” he said. Arreaza accused protesters of using firearms and “home-made weapons” against security forces, but noted that the last death was on July 30. “Our country is now at peace,” he added. Venezuela is among the 47 members of the Council, where it enjoys strong support from Cuba, Iran and other states. Diego Arria, who was Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations in New York from 1991 to 1994, told a separate Geneva event organized by activists and action group UN Watch that Venezuela should be referred to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. “I am convinced that the killing in the streets equates to crimes against humanity,” he said. The Hague-based court defines such crimes as including torture, murder, deprivation of liberty, sexual violence and persecution, he said. Julieta Lopez, aunt of opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez who remains under house arrest after three years in a military jail, said abuses continued. “There is no right to express a different political opinion without being threatened, beaten or imprisoned,” she told the same event. Additional reporting by Marina Depetris; Editing by Tom Miles and Alison WilliamsOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Sometimes the quest to distance ourselves from oppression becomes truly creative. “I’m not racist,” says Lucas Joyner – ironically – in his viral track, My Sister’s Boyfriend’s Black. Donald Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, was rightly ridiculed for attempting to prove his antiracism credentials by posting a collage of pictures of himself with black people – an absurd “wokeness by association” even if it were not obviously overridden by the fact that he advocates for an overtly racist president. Then there’s my personal favourite: “I’m not racist – I’m having a Motown-themed wedding.”Sexism, like racism, is a system, and saying you’re against it is rarely enough. How many of us women realise the level of sexism we have internalised? It would be strange if we hadn’t. We are conditioned by, educated in, and live out our lives in a deeply sexist society. Our schools, universities and media organisations are neither run by feminists nor overtly committed to a feminist ideology – and, as became so obvious last year with James Damore’s infamous Google memo, the tech companies that control so much of our information are no different. When you consider how few of the means by which we access information are feminist, it is not surprising that most of us still don’t really know what feminism is.Germaine Greer’s work on “horizontal hostility” – female factionalism – came to mind this week, when Meghan Markle’s sister Samantha launched a new round of slurs directed towards her prenuptial sibling, Meghan. The estranged Samantha, who seems unable to choose between wanting an invitation to the royal wedding on the one hand and seeking to promote her forthcoming book, The Diary of Princess Pushy’s Sister, on the other, denounced Meghan Markle’s humanitarian work as “exploitative”, and voiced her disapproval of “situations where celebrities visit a place which is poverty stricken and they’re wearing impeccable clothing – they themselves are wealthy”.Ironically, it’s a critique I have some sympathy with, but that’s not the point. There’s no evidence that Afrocentric activism is Samantha Markle’s main concern. She has perfected the art of humiliating her sister – a service for which she has found insatiable demand in the media, apologising just enough to seem like a nice person, all the while devising her own plans to cash in on Meghan’s newfound mega-fame.I don’t really blame her. She has been set up, as have we all, to want to attack each other. It was Greer who first drew “horizontal hostility” – a feature of patriarchy in which women turn on each other, humiliating and discriminating against other women – to my attention. Greer sadly also somehow manages to simultaneously embody the hostility that she critiques. She has been complaining about contemporary feminists “bitching and whingeing” on blogs and in millennial-targeted books, or “spreading their legs” and then hashtagging #MeToo, all the while unwittingly proving the real-life validity of her own theoretical points.Every single development that could help us as women to move forward is met by prominent women who want to hold us back. The positive feminist backlash sparked by Trump’s election was followed by the small but highly visible group of people, including women, demanding that the US #RepealThe19th – as in repeal the 19th amendment – that gave American women the right to vote. In the week that marks 100 years since the beginning of British women’s suffrage, the fact that a group of contemporary American women are trying to get rid of theirs is a cold, culture-war rain shower.The #MeToo movement began, I thought, to provide a platform for women to share experiences of sexism and abuse they had previously felt too intimidated to declare openly, or justifiably concerned about the consequences of doing so. What’s most striking to me about the movement is how quickly it descended into a row between women. Not just any women, but some of the most prominent: Germaine Greer, one of my idols, the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, the French actor Catherine Deneuve.One of my personal low points came last week, in a TV debate about the Presidents Club – the all-men’s club that has now shut down after an undercover investigation revealed a pattern of abuse facing women who worked there as hostesses; men exposing themselves and groping women, women required to sign non-disclosure agreements to restrict their ability to speak out. In standing up for the right of women to operate in their workplace without harassment or assault, I was accused of being “against working-class women”. Middle-class women like me, the argument went, were looking for some high-and-mighty cause to pursue, and found it in removing jobs from working-class women who were happily earning a living being groped by men who were rich and powerful.This is an inevitable consequence of the co-option of feminism by the mainstream that the writer bell hooks warned about more than 30 years ago, which has led to the struggle against sexism being depoliticised, and removed from its radical history in class struggle, socialism, antiracism and women’s solidarity. It’s too easy for women who don’t know what feminism is – for all the reasons I’ve outlined above – to assume it’s about BBC presenters wanting £300,000 instead of £150,000.At the same time, so many of the grandees of female privilege seem to be rejecting feminism too. Julia Hartley-Brewer, whose revelation that Michael Fallon put his hand on her knee brought #MeToo to Westminster; Ann Leslie, who described Tory MP Nicholas Fairbairn groping her crotch as the kind of “silly” situation women should be able to brush off; Melanie Phillips, who decided that the centenary of initial suffrage was a good opportunity to attack women again; and Shirley Williams on the Today programme, the same day, lamenting that women are not as tough as we used to be in the good old days, when a well-placed stiletto heel was all it took to disable an approaching male assailant in the House of Commons.There are so many misunderstandings between us. Women like me do not feel the need to preface our feminism with reassuring words for men – it shouldn’t need to be said that men are key feminist allies – nor do we favour a witch-hunt. You can be a feminist and defend rape suspects, as I did, as a criminal defence lawyer. A justice system run by women would look very different, which is why it’s important to advocate relentlessly for more gender equality at its senior levels at the same time as doing the best we can for a fair process for perpetrators, who need to be convicted and punished properly.One hundred years since women first won the right to vote, it has finally become mainstream to celebrate the suffragettes; Millicent Fawcett has been voted the last century’s most influential woman, and we are all quoting Emmeline Pankhurst. Mention the fact that Pankhurst was a staunch imperialist, blind to the colonial exploitation of African women, however, and you stray outside acceptable feminism. Such feminism is still seen as threatening – and it may well take another 100 years to change that. Topics Feminism Opinion Women Sexual harassment comment

For months, reports have been coming out of Asia saying that the supply of Apple’s new iPhone X phone will be severely constrained. Another such report came from the Nikkei today, stating that Apple will have only about half the iPhone X’s it planned on for the launch.A bit later in the day, Apple posted a statement saying that the new phone will be available both for pre-order October 27th and in stores on launch day, November 3. The statement also helpfully adds that buyers on November 3 should “arrive early.” (Read: “Please make huge lines and tweet lots of photos!”) You can also read it as Apple saying supplies will be very limited. You can also wonder exactly how early Apple means when they say “arrive early.”An Apple spokesperson repeated that information when I called, but would not say if Apple had reserved separate allotments of the phones for pre-orders and more in-store buys. This matters because in the past one has depended on the other. Last year the iPhone 7 Plus sold out during pre-orders, leaving none available for purchase in the stores on launch day.I seriously doubt Apple would create a situation where only the first five people in line will get the opportunity to lay down $999 and up for a new iPhone X, leaving everybody else to go home angry (if richer). I suspect anybody who shows up in the first few hours will be able to get a phone.But I also fully expect that demand will far exceed supply. Around the time of the announcement of the iPhone X in September, the common narrative held that supplies of the new phone would be limited for six months after launch. Those reports were based on rumored difficulties in manufacturing the optical systems that do the facial recognition–one of the handful of key new features in the new phone.Citing the same issues, today’s Nikkei report says Apple will be able to ship only 20 million of the 40 million iPhone X’s it hoped to ship in the period from launch to the end of December.“Apple is launching iPhone X in 55 countries next week, in addition to having some supply available at Apple Retail stores,” writes Above Avalon analyst Neil Cybart in a brief today. “My suspicion is there will be more than 2M to 3M iPhone X units shipping at launch.”The problem is compounded by the likelihood that many buyers held off buying the new iPhone 8 or iPhone 8 Plus so that they could buy an iPhone X. This was borne out by the shorter-than-usual delivery lead times for iPhone 8 and 8 Plus pre-orders. Where the iPhone X offers several new features never seen in iPhones before, the iPhone 8 contained mainly upgrades of existing components and features.More recent research suggests the iPhone 8 Plus (starts at $799) is outselling the smaller and less expensive iPhone 8 (starts at $699). Mixpanel data from October 23 says 1.79% of all new iPhone turn-ons were from iPhone 8 Plus, while only 1.30% were from iPhone 8’s. This suggests either that people want iPhones with really big screens, or (more likely) that they want iPhones with dual cameras and far better photographs. The iPhone X also has dual cameras.My advice: Before going to stand in line to buy an iPhone X, give some serious thought to whether or not you’re really going to be able to train your thumb to stop reaching for that Home button (the iPhone X, of course, doesn’t have one.)

If we examine India’s current development strategy, including the Make in India initiative, it is implicitly oriented towards replicating the Chinese growth story.China’s spectacular growth record is seen as a validation of the investment- and export-led model successfully pursued earlier by some of the east Asian economies, with a focus on low-cost labour-intensive manufacturing. This strategy has also been based on benign assumptions regarding energy and resource availability, which may not remain valid as the global economy undergoes a major restructuring after the global financial and economic crisis of 2007–08.India’s participation in these supply chains is weak.China’s emergence as a low-cost manufacturing hub and leading merchandise exporter was enabled by a relatively extended period of unusually favourable international economic factors. The major consuming markets of the US, the EU and Japan were relatively open and expanding. Global trade grew at an average rate of 6% per annum, double the rate of world GDP. Further, more than 50% of Chinese export goods were generated by wholly-owned subsidiaries of multinationals or joint ventures between Chinese and foreign partners.More recently, China has become increasingly integrated into the global supply chains of multinational conglomerates like Apple and Microsoft. The supply chains consist of production facilities spread across a number of countries, each manufacturing only some components, which are assembled together at a final location into finished products.India’s participation in these supply chains is weak. In the early phase, foreign companies invested in China to use it as a low-cost processing platform for products to be sold in Western markets rather than in the domestic Chinese market.Despite a slowdown, the US, EU, and Japan remain the most significant markets globally.Since China joined the WTO in 2001, its share of exports to the combined markets of the US, the EU, and Japan has risen to 18%. This extremely supportive international economic environment that helped China’s economic rise, and which India to some extent also leveraged in the 1991-2008 period, no longer exists. It is unlikely to revive even when the global economy fully recovers from the consequences of the financial crisis.There are longer-term forces at play, which may transform global economic and trade architecture in such a way that India’s investment- and export-led strategy may not deliver the expected outcomes. Despite the economic slowdown, the US, the EU, and Japan continue to be the most significant markets globally. But global trade, which has been growing faster than the global GDP, has now declined to equal global GDP growth rates, plunging even lower the last two years. And even though China is the world’s second-largest economy, it accounts for only 2% of global imports.All this has left a global market that India finds less welcoming than in the past.All this has left a global market that India finds less welcoming than in the past. The recent stagnation in its exports bears this out. It has been argued that for accelerated growth India must seek to become part of global supply chains. But the major global and regional supply chains in Asia, centred on China, are already deeply entrenched and hard to penetrate, particularly since we still have problems on the infrastructure, delivery and quality fronts. In addition, technological changes such as 3-D printing are creating an incipient trend towards the relocalisation of manufacture. Advances in robotics may also do away with the need for low-skilled, repetitive labour in industry. China achieved a spectacular rise in its exports, from $17 billion in 1980 to $1.7 trillion in 2010. This was aided by a significant inflow of capital from Greater China (Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong), Japan, and the West.The investments that poured into China were part of the global trend towards higher capital flows, both from and among the major economies. For example, in the US, foreign direct investment (FDI) grew from $19 billion in 1980 to $338 billion in 2013. For Japan, the comparable figures are $2.3 billion and $135.7 billion. In the EU, investments rose from $21 billion in 1980 to a staggering $809 billion in 2000 before plunging to $250 billion in 2013. We are unlikely to see such massive flows of capital in the near future.We are also beginning to witness a rise in protectionist trends, which portends the fragmentation of the global economy. India can welcome the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the proposed new mega trade and investment blocs like the TPP in the Asia-Pacific and the TTIP covering North America and Europe.From the Indian perspective these blocs are simply large trading and investment arrangements spanning the globe and excluding India. They would have made entering the world’s largest markets more difficult for India particularly since they threatened to put in place a whole series of non-tariff barriers in the shape of new and more rigorous norms, standards and regulatory procedures. India would have been unable to conform to them. While the move gives India some breathing space, protectionist threats are cropping up across the world. The emphasis is now on nation-to-nation trade deals rather than regional arrangements. With global trade stagnant and markets shrinking, India will have to find additional drivers for growth rather than rely on just an export- and investment-led strategy. Linked to this market-limiting trend is the growing resource crunch.Excerpted with permission from Shyam Saran’s book How India Sees the World published by Juggernaut Books. We welcome your comments at ideas.india@qz.com.

A judge has found that Brazil’s new environment minister altered plans for an environmentally protected area in order to favour businesses, but he is still likely to assume his role in the far-right government of president-elect Jair Bolsonaro on 1 January.Ricardo Salles told the Guardian he will appeal and said the new government will “dedicate a lot of attention” to rising deforestation.A judge in São Paulo found Salles had committed “administrative improbity”, suspended his political rights for three years, and ordered him to pay a fine worth ten times his monthly salary. Judge Fausto Seabra also found against the São Paulo state federation of industry, known as FIESP, and ordered it to pay the same fine.The civil action concerned an environmental management plan for a protected area around the River Tietê in São Paulo state. Prosecutors alleged that Salles, two others and FIESP “committed fraud in order to benefit business sectors, in particular mining companies and others associated with FIESP”, arguing they modified maps and altered the environmental plan decree.The judge found that Salles violated legal and regulatory norms, impeded the participation of other sectors of the environmental system and “attended the economic interests of a restricted group in detriment to the defence of the environment”. He also said there was no “effective loss” to the environment because the process was not approved.“The decision highlights there was no environmental damage, that there was no undue advantage on my part, there was nothing serious,” said Salles. “The judge believed it was not up to the environment secretary to make changes to conciliate the environment with economic development.”Gustavo Bebbiano, a member of Bolsonaro’s cabinet, said Salles could still assume his ministerial role despite the ruling.“There will be no space for anyone who does not have a clean sheet. I don’t think that would be the case of future minister Ricardo Salles, but this will be considered in good time,” he told the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper.Bolsonaro has attacked environment ministry agencies for excessive fines, advocated mining and commercial agriculture on protected indigenous reserves and said environmental protection cannot hold up economic development. Salles, whose appointment was recommended by an agribusiness association, has called global warming a “secondary” issue.Salles said the new government planned to make Brazil’s environmental licensing and fines system transparent by putting it online, arguing that this would reduce the “large volume” of fines revised or annulled by the courts. “If they were made with more technical rigour we would not have so many problems,” he said.He said the new environmental ministry team will “respect the law and respect people”.“Brazil always respected and cared a lot for the environment and we intend to continue,” he said. Topics Brazil Jair Bolsonaro news

Efforts to conquer antimicrobial resistance are being jeopardised in India due to the sale of huge volumes of antibiotics that combine two antimicrobial drugs in one pill, our latest analysis reveals. Many of these fixed-dose combination (FDC) formulations, as they are known, have not been approved by India’s drug regulator. Their sale is illegal.Antibiotic resistance is a global crisis, threatening to reverse the astonishing health benefits achieved with antibiotics. As bacteria adapt to survive, effective treatments, even for common infections, are diminishing.Unfortunately, new antibiotics in development are not yet offering realistic prospects for treating the infections caused by resistant bacteria. These infections include common kidney and chest infections, as well as life-threatening conditions, such as sepsis and meningitis.So, wherever we live and in whatever guise we encounter antibiotics—as patients, prescribers, pharmacists, drug sellers, pharmaceutical companies, drug developers, animal owners or veterinarians—we have a shared responsibility to ensure our existing stash of these precious drugs remains as effective as possible against disease-causing bacteria. The World Health Organisation (WHO) is acutely aware of this, using its unique position to lead policy change for rational antibiotic use.This year, the WHO made a major revision to its list of essential medicines, classifying antibiotics into three categories with recommendations on when each category should be used in common bacterial infections (such as chest or kidney infections, and excluding tuberculosis and viral infections, such as HIV).The first category, so-called “key access group” antibiotics, are those that should be “widely available, affordable and quality assured.” These antibiotics are suitable to treat most common bacterial infections. The second category, “watch group” antibiotics, are recommended for specific infections. Bacteria tend to develop resistance easily to these drugs, so judicious use is needed.The final category, “reserve group” antibiotics, should only be used as a last resort when all alternatives have failed. The WHO specifies that these drugs should be “protected and prioritised” to preserve their effectiveness.India is known as “the pharmacy of the world,” due to its large pharmaceutical industry. It has among the highest per capita sales of antibiotics globally, as well as high levels of antimicrobial resistance.In our study of antibiotic sales in India between 2007 and 2012, we found that total sales were rising annually, and the increase was driven by FDCs. While total antibiotic sales increased by 26% over five years, FDC sales rose by 38%. By 2011-12, FDCs comprised a third of all antibiotics sold in India (872m units).Analysed according to the new WHO categories, we found that sales of FDCs with key access antibiotics had risen by 20% in five years. However, the sale of watch group and reserve group antibiotics rose much more steeply—by 73% and 174%, respectively.We found 118 different antibiotic FDC formulations on the market, but only 43 were approved by India’s drug regulator, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation. The sale of unapproved new medicines is illegal in India, yet 75 formulations had no approval record. So they had no regulatory scrutiny to decide if they were likely, on balance, to be of more public benefit than harm.Unapproved formulations figured hugely in sales—270m units of the FDC antibiotics sold in 2011-12 contained unapproved formulations. The Indian government banned some unapproved FDCs, including antibiotic formulations from sale—most recently in 2016. But the bans have been challenged by the industry and it appears the FDCs remain on sale.Considering the WHO vision of conserving watch and reserve group antibiotics, their increasing sales, not to mention the numbers of unapproved formulations, suggests there is a formidable task ahead in India.Patricia McGettigan, reader in clinical pharmacology and medical education, Queen Mary University of London and Allyson Pollock, professor of public health, Newcastle University This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. We welcome your comments at ideas.india@qz.com.

“We know it’s red, but the more subtle features — the exact shape of it, whether there’s a white border around it — these are things we often miss, even though we’ve seen it millions of times,” he said.Perhaps the most surprising result of the Signs.com study was the company that fared best: Ikea. The Swedish furniture maker with the distinctive blue-and-yellow logo plastered across its giant retail stores was redrawn near-perfectly by 30 percent of the participants.Asa Nordin, who is a senior coordinator of Ikea trademarks at Inter Ikea Systems, said the unique shape, colors, and longevity of the logo — it has been around since 1983 — most likely contributed to its memorability.“The logo is merely the symbol for what the Ikea brand promises and delivers,” Ms. Nordin said in an email. “The logo shall mirror that ‘promise’ as near as possible, as well as stand out from its surroundings. To be consistent and unique is clearly a strength of a logo.”The hardest logo to draw was Starbucks, which was redesigned in 2011. It is also arguably the most complex.“Simplicity is key,” Mr. James said. “That’s not necessarily a new concept. But this definitely corroborates that idea.”But is any logo overwhelmingly memorable? Mr. James is now curious. Initially, he resisted putting an overly straightforward and ubiquitous symbol in his study, like those of McDonald’s or Nike.“We thought it was too simple,” Mr. James said. “But, I wonder.”

"Russia got themselves involved back when it was a civil war. In some respects, the effort to defeat ISIS changed priorities for some," the official said. "Certainly, for us, the priority was defeating ISIS. I think for Russia, it's a question of how long do they want to continue to support conflict." "What the joint statement indicates is a commitment to get this to a political reconciliation and peace process. That serves their interest, it serves our interest," the official said.Asked if Russia has enough influence to bring Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to the table, the official said: "We're going to be testing that, we're going to find out."The White House said Trump and Putin spoke for about five minutes in between events at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. The most extensive conversation observed by reporters came as the two leaders shared a friendly, yet brief, walk to a photo op in between meetings on Saturday. The two leaders looked comfortable together and smiled as they talked.Inside Syria's safe zones, Russia and Assad hold the cardsTrump, speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday, said the agreement is "going to save tremendous numbers of lives."Describing his interactions with Putin, Trump said that they got along well and agreed to the joint statement "very quickly.""We seem to have a very good feeling for each other, a good relationship considering we don't know each other well," Trump said. "I think it's a very good relationship."According to the joint statement, Trump and Putin "agreed to maintain open military channels of communication" between the two countries on Syria and said their efforts would continue "until the final defeat of ISIS is achieved.""The Presidents agreed that there is no military solution to the conflict in Syria," the statement said, adding that the two agreed to find an "ultimate political solution" to the conflict.Senior State Department officials later told reporters that the statement was the product of "intense, difficult" negotiations over the past several months, led by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson along with Pentagon officials. The officials said that the defeat of ISIS and reduction of the terror group's caliphate was going well and that the de-escalation zones implemented in gradual phases had resulted in a significant reduction in the violence and helped save many lives.The officials said the agreement marked Russia's firmest commitment yet to a new constitution and free elections in Syria through a UN-led process.The results of the Trump-Putin meeting in Vietnam mirror what happened when the two world leaders met for the first time in Germany earlier this year.Though Russia's interference in the 2016 election was discussed, the two leaders also agreed to a ceasefire in southwest Syria, too."This is our first indication of the US and Russia being able to work together in Syria," Tillerson said at the time.

The lack of cheap smartphones has been a major barrier to bringing India's roughly 900 million unconnected citizens online — creating an opportunity for keenly priced providers such as Xiaomi.Xiaomi is also grappling with a falling currency on its home turf and biggest market, China. India's rupee has been one of the world's worst performing currencies this year,hitting a series of record lowsagainst a rising dollar.Higher oil prices and concerns about a possible economic slowdown have contributed to the decline.Xiaomi has risenrapidly to the topof India's smartphone market — the second-largest in the world behind China — by making its smartphones more affordable than competitors such as Apple (AAPL) and Samsung (SSNLF). The Chinese firm sold more than a quarter of India's smartphones in the three months to September, according to industry estimates.5 days, $1 billion: Flipkart and Amazon spur Indian smartphone bonanzaAnalysts say other players in India are likely to feel the impact of the falling currency as well. Realme, another Chinese brand, alsoannouncedit would hike the price of two smartphones by around 6% and 14% respectively."The falling rupee is going to impact prices," said Rushabh Doshi, an analyst at research firm Canalys. "Vendors like Xiaomi who operate so close to cost are definitely going to be the first ones who are going to be impacted." Bigger brands like Samsung, Xiaomi's chief rival in India, have the advantage of a wider global reach and revenues in several currencies, including the US dollar. Meanwhile, the currency of Xiaomi's other big market and home turf — China — has alsodropped sharplythis year.The Chinese phone giant that beat Apple to Africa"For Xiaomi, its major business is in China and India so it operates in the renminbi and Indian rupee — both of which have fallen against the US dollar," Doshi said, adding that the company buys many of its components in dollars. "So it is very important for them to start correcting their prices."

A Turkish intelligence agency has captured in Syria the chief suspect in the 2013 twin bomb attack in the border town of Reyhanli, Turkish media report.State-run Anadolu news agency said the National Intelligence Organisation had apprehended Yusuf Nazik, a Turkish citizen, in the port city of Latakia.He had confessed to "acting on orders from Syrian intelligence", it added. The Syrian government has denied that it played any role in the Reyhanli attack, which left 53 people dead. The Turkish and Syrian governments are fighting on opposing sides in Syria's civil war, with Ankara backing rebel forces trying to oust President Bashar al-Assad. Deadly blasts hit Turkey border town Reyhanli bombings tear apart communities Why is there a war in Syria? Anadolu said National Intelligence Organisation agents had brought Mr Nazik to Turkey after capturing him in Latakia - a stronghold of the Syrian government - in a "carefully planned and executed operation" that involved "no intelligence or logistical support from a foreign state".During questioning, the 34-year-old from the city of Antakya had confessed that in 2013, after receiving a "tip-off from Syrian intelligence units, he scouted the crime scene prior to the attack and moved explosives from Syria to Turkey", the agency added.He then procured two vehicles to move the explosives, according to Anadolu.A video published by Anadolu showed Mr Nazik standing next to a Turkish flag and saying: "I was not able to escape from the Turkish state." He also warned Syria's government that Turkey would "make you pay eventually".There was no immediate response from Syrian officials.Anadolu said that in February nine people were sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of involvement in the Reyhanli attack, and that 13 others were jailed for between 10 and 15 years.

Russia has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have extended an international inquiry into chemical weapons attacks in Syria.It is the 10th time Moscow has used its veto powers at the UN in support of its ally since the conflict began.US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, accused Russia of undermining the organisation's ability to deter future chemical attacks.The Russian ambassador dismissed the criticism. The Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) was set up in 2015 to identify perpetrators of chemical attacks. It is the only official mission investigating the use of chemical weapons in Syria.Moscow strongly criticised the inquiry when it blamed the Syrian government for a deadly nerve agent attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in April. Syria denies using banned chemical weapons. Why is there a war in Syria? Syria chemical 'attack': What we know Syria 'still producing chemical weapons' Mrs Haley described the latest Russian veto as "a deep blow"."Russia has killed the investigative mechanism which has overwhelming support of this council," she said."By eliminating our ability to identify the attackers, Russia has undermined our ability to deter future attacks." Created in 2015 with unanimous backing from the UN Security Council and renewed in 2016 for another year Involves the UN and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Has previously concluded that Syrian government forces used chlorine as a weapon at least three times between 2014 and 2015 It has also found that Islamic State militants used sulphur mustard in one attack. The Security Council rejected a Russian-drafted resolution to extend the inquiry but with changes to membership of the panel. The draft also called for the panel's findings on Khan Sheikhoun to be put aside.Russian ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said it was Western countries who had sabotaged the inquiry."Some council members refused to support our draft and now they have full responsibility for terminating the JIM," he said."This just proves again that the anti-Damascus fever is the only real priority for them and that they have manipulated the JIM for their own purposes."Japan later tabled a draft resolution that would extend the JIM for another 30 days, as opposed to the one-year extension in the US-written draft blocked by Russia. The council was due to vote on the new resolution later on Friday.Russia, the UK, China, France and the US all have veto powers at the Security Council.The attack on Khan Sheikhoun in April left more than 80 people dead and prompted the US to launch missile strikes on a Syrian airbase.Last month a UN Human Rights Council inquiry concluded a Syrian air force jet was responsible, dismissing statements from Russia that the jet had dropped conventional munitions that struck a rebel chemical weapons depot.Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said the incident in Khan Sheikhoun was a "fabrication".By Jonathan Marcus, BBC News Defence CorrespondentThe demise of the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) is a small but significant milestone in the wider unravelling or undermining of a whole network of arms-control agreements. Syria was in a sense a laboratory in which to carry out a stress-test on the Chemical Weapons Convention, and it has failed.Damascus signed and ratified the international treaty banning chemical weapons. It was "disarmed" under international supervision and still people are dying from chemical attack.The JIM investigators have concluded that the Syrian government was responsible for a number of nerve agent attacks and that so-called IS has used sulphur mustard at least twice. But now its activities have been halted by Syria's patron, Russia. What, many may ask, is the point in having international norms against chemical weapons unless the practical investigative and legal structures to unmask their use are given full and solid support?

India’s escalating man-animal conflict is leaving its elephants with no safe home. A recent heart-wrenching incident inside Karnataka’s Nagarhole National Park in southern India captures the gravity of the situation. On Dec. 15, a 42-year-old elephant suffocated to death after getting stuck in a seven feet high iron fence. Ironically, the fence was set up by forest authorities to protect the creatures by preventing them from straying into human settlements.The elephant reportedly managed to cross over and raided a nearby agricultural field, after which it was chased away by villagers. But when it tried to climb over to return to the forest, it was trapped in the fence. “The diaphragm of the elephant got compressed very heavily due to the pressure that fell on it and because of that the choking of the respiratory organs occurred,” KM Narayanaswamy, conservator of forests and director of Nagarahole National Park, told The News Minute website.The brutal death has sparked heavy criticism from activists who have raised concerns before about the risks of using such fences to keep wildlife away from human settlements.But these fences are a part of the forest department’s strategy to minimise human-elephant conflict, which has increased as settlements close in on the latter’s diminishing natural habitat and traditional elephant corridors. In several Indian states, elephants straying onto farmland have destroyed crops, prompting the ire of villagers, who rarely receive enough compensation for their losses. They often respond by chasing away elephants with weapons and even fireballs, an approach recently outlawed by the supreme court of India.India is home to about 60% of the world’s Asian elephants. But data from the environment ministry has shown that on average at least 80 elephants are killed annually by electrocution, poaching, train accidents, and poisoning. India’s 2017 elephant census revealed that since 2012 their population has declined by 10% to 27,312.The Nagarhole incident is only the latest example this year of the tragic consequences of human-wildlife conflict, coming just a few days after the gruesome death of an eight-year-old elephant who had chewed a bomb left by poachers in Odisha. In October, a pachyderm known as “Rowdy Ranga” was mowed down by a speeding bus in Nagarhole, and a few weeks later, in Odisha again, seven elephants were electrocuted by a low-hanging power line.Between April and mid-December, 65 elephants were killed in Odisha alone, most of them due to human interventions such as power lines, oncoming trains, and the construction of wells, tanks, and drains, which elephants have fallen into.The only solution, conservationists say, is to restore elephant corridors and reduce the risk of the animals falling prey to humans. But little has happened on that front.

By Nov. 7, 2017 8:00 am ET CARACAS, Venezuela—The World Bank ranks Venezuela 187th in terms of ease of doing business, just behind war-torn South Sudan. But Gabriel Jiménez says his crisis-hit native country is a great place to hire people for his tech startup. Mr. Jiménez, 27, has a small business registered in Miami that subcontracts work like webpage design, developing apps, and corporate network maintenance for clients in the U.S., Mexico, Australia, and elsewhere. All his programmers are in Venezuela, where the local currency’s free fall has made... To Read the Full Story Subscribe Sign In

Two Delhi police officers drive along a dark highway to the home of an accused rapist, reflecting on the increasingly sadistic violence they are seeing in the Indian capital. “It’s simple,” one tells the other. “The bigger the gap between the rich and poor, the more the crimes.”Delhi Crime, a Netflix miniseries debuting globally on Friday, reconstructs the police investigation into the notorious 2012 gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh. The student’s killing triggered protests across India, reform of the country’s sexual assault laws and an ongoing reckoning about women’s safety in the country.The appropriately moody drama dwells on the role that India’s widening inequality could have played in Singh’s murder and crimes like it, though that isn’t the only culprit identified over seven hour-long episodes.In the same scene in the car, one of the officers describes an India “exploding” with poorly educated young men fighting over a small pool of jobs, with ideas about sex and women drawn either from patriarchal custom or pornography. “If they don’t get it, they take it, with no regard for the consequences,” he says. “After all, they have nothing to lose.”Despite the dark subject matter, the director Richie Mehta says he set out to tell a positive story. “It’s not about the illustration of evil,” the Canadian-Indian says. “It’s about the aftermath and the people who deal with it.”The series emerged from six years Mehta spent reading case material and interviewing the authorities involved in the investigation. Delhi’s underfunded, undertrained and endemically corrupt police force were a particular target of the protests that swelled after Singh’s murder.“[But] as they talked me through their experiences I started to see the limitations they faced,” Mehta says. “Like that they don’t get to see their families for weeks at a time during an investigation, or that an officer [involved in the Singh case] didn’t even have a vehicle to get to the crime scene.”The depiction of the investigation is warts-and-all: suspects are frequently beaten; officers keep trying to bunk work to go home or to the gym; lights flicker and then go out when a station can’t afford to pay its fuel bill. Yet a core group of officers doggedly work to catch the six perpetrators, four of whom are still on death row (one ended their own life in prison in 2013 and another, a juvenile, was released in 2015).The drama is a blend of fact and fiction. The deputy police commissioner, Vartika Chaturvedi, who oversees the investigation, is based on a real official. Officers really did wade across a river to find a suspect – and persuaded him to cooperate by threatening to report his crimes to his mother.Chaturvedi’s daughter, a restive teenager eager to leave Delhi for Toronto, is a composite of several people, and serves as a stand-in for wealthier young Indians wrestling with the question of whether to stay and help improve their city or decamp to the US, Australia or Europe.“I can’t walk down the street without getting harassed, I can’t take the metro without men staring at me, and every college that I apply to has 50,000 applications – and it’s only getting worse,” the teenager tells her mother in the first episode.“No, it’s getting better,” she replies. “You just can’t see it.”More than five years later, the crime against Singh is still a raw issue. India’s Daughter, a powerful BBC documentary on the subject that included interviews with the rapists, was banned from being screened in the country in 2015. Mehta says he received the blessing of Singh’s parents to make the series, which he hopes will challenge the reputation Delhi has as one of the most dangerous cities for women in the world.“I hope people see the complexity in the situation,” he says. “It’s very easy for people outside of this place to look at it and say: ‘Oh my god, it’s unsafe, I would never go there.’“But any police officer will tell you, there up to 22 million people in this city and 80,000 police officers on the streets. Statistically, they can’t stop crime from being committed. People are policing themselves,” he says.“People are good and there are good officers, trying to do the right thing.” Topics India Netflix South and Central Asia news

Yayoi Kusama is about to apply a splash of colour to an unremarkable Tokyo suburb with the opening of a new museum dedicated to the avant-garde artist whose career spans six decades, tens of thousands of artworks and countless polka dots.The 88-year-old’s trademark motif – along with her familiar “infinity nets” and generously lashed eye designs – feature prominently at the museum, from its glass entrance to the interior of the lift and even the mirrored walls of the toilet. The five-storey Yayoi Kusama Museum, located among featureless apartment blocs in the Japanese capital’s western suburbs, has attracted huge interest before its public opening on Sunday.The global acclaim that has greeted what many believe is Kusama’s golden age has forced the museum’s owners to restrict the number of visitors, with just 50 people to be admitted four times a day for 90 minutes each.That should be long enough to venture deep into Kusama’s psychedelic world of abstract expressionism, from her newly sculptured bulbous pumpkin in the building’s rooftop gallery, to dozens of paintings and an “infinity room” filled with glowing pumpkins.It was, perhaps, only a matter of time before Kusama, whose work has appeared at the Tate Modern, the Pompidou in Paris and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, gave her name to a space she can genuinely call her own.Kusama has been turning her obsessions into visually striking paintings and installations since the late 1950s, when she was part of the same New York art scene that produced Andy Warhol and Kusama’s biggest influence, Georgia O’Keeffe.But it is only in the past two decades that her works have attracted global admiration, earning her the title of the world’s favourite artist in 2014, the same year one of her paintings sold for $7.1m (£5.3m).The museum’s open spaces, white walls and curved lines provide the minimalist backdrop to dozens of colour and black-and-white paintings covering the walls of the two main gallery spaces.Tucked away by the staircase is a door that leads into her latest infinity room, where dotted pumpkins flicker in the dark, giving visitors the sense they are standing in the middle of an endless field.“We want people to come and look at great art, but also to learn something about Kusama the person,” said Akira Tatehata, the museum’s director.At her nearby studio, the artist told reporters that she had no intention of slowing down.“From age five or 10, I’ve been painting, from morning to night,” she said. “Even now, there isn’t a single day when I’m not painting.”Surrounded by piles of brightly coloured canvases and wearing her familiar scarlet wig along with an orange and black dress, Kusama said the visions of polka dots were as strong today as they were when she first saw them as a child growing up in the town of Matsumoto in the Japanese Alps.“I still see hallucinations even now,” she said. “Dots come flying everywhere – on my dress, the floor, things I’m carrying, throughout the house, the ceiling. And I paint them.”In 1957, Kusama, then in her late 20s, left Japan for the US after a lengthy correspondence with O’Keeffe. There she indulged her obsession with repetition and multiplication, and organised artistic “happenings” that sometimes featured casts of naked people covered in polka dots.After growing disillusioned with life in New York, she returned to Japan in 1973 to seek psychiatric treatment. Two years later she checked herself into a mental health institution, where she lives to this day.The museum’s inaugural exhibition, Creation is a Solitary Pursuit, Love is What Brings You Closer to Art, comprises mostly recent works divided into two sections. My Eternal Soul is a collection of large acrylic paintings – including several that have never been shown before – in vibrant colours that Kusama began in 2009; Love Forever comprises 50 silk screens of marker pen drawings that encapsulate her fascination with repetition and accumulation.While the non-conformism that shocked audiences during her “phallic period” in the 1950s is absent from the current exhibition, her philosophical connection with the beat generation remains strong well into her ninth decade.“In every way, I want to pour my love into humanity, and for a wonderful society without war,” she said. “I want to live every day with the longing to fight for mankind.” Topics Yayoi Kusama Japan Art Asia Pacific news