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The Berlin government has sliced the city’s arts and culture budget by €130 million (about $135 million), sparking concerns that institutions may be forced to close and imperiling the German capital’s status as an arts hub. The cuts, which represent 12 percent of the sector’s budget, are part of the city’s 2025 spending plan and have been robustly defended by Berlin’s mayor, Kai Wegner, a member of the right-wing Christian Democratic Union. According to the Art Newspaper (TAN), Wegner blamed the cuts on the “green dreams” of the prior, left-wing administration, citing a need for a “change of mentality” and pointing to the city’s “record” €40 billion budget. Bandied about for weeks, the cuts almost certainly place jobs and programs in jeopardy, and the arts community has been vocal about these and other possible negative outcomes, including a tamping-down of experimental or less commercial programming. Emma Enderby, director of the nonprofit KW Institute for Contemporary Art, told TAN that “culture and clubs bring people to Berlin. They don’t come here for the food, they come here for the history and the culture.” Enderby noted that organizations have still not received information regarding the full budget and that it may not be communicated until mid-January. Nevertheless, with such notice, institutions are already making difficult choices. “We are letting certain positions go and closing certain programmatic initiatives, such as one of our mediation programs,” Enderby told TAN. Calling the cuts “short-sighted,” she explained that “in Berlin, culture costs around 2 percent of the overall economy, yet they’re cutting us between around 10 percent and in some cases 50 percent.” “It’s a very bad decision—pennywise and pound foolish in every sense,” Paul Spies, a co-president of the Berlin Museums Association and former director of the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, told the publication. “And it’s been done so bluntly and without input from the cultural department. It doesn’t seem that the Senate has listened to the specialists about what is possible and what is not possible.” Along with musuems, artists are expected to be affected by the cuts. “Many initiatives like studio spaces and residences that support them are also being removed or cut,” said Enderby, “which will completely change the attractiveness of coming to Berlin, an increasingly expensive city to live in.”
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The Oxford University Press has named “brain rot” as the Oxford Word of the Year 2024. As I’m sure many of us can relate, “brain rot” is a term related to consuming excessive amounts of low-quality online content, especially on social media. The actual definition is “the supposed deterioration of a person's mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging.” It’s a word – not technically a word, actually two words – first used by author Henry David Thoreau in 1854 in his book Walden . Brain rot speaks to both the addictive and irresistible popularity of social media, as well as what it does to our cognitive abilities. It can also refer to the content itself. “It demonstrates a somewhat cheeky self-awareness in the younger generations about the harmful impact of the social media that they’ve inherited,” Casper Grathwohl, president, Oxford Languages, said in a news release. Last year’s winning word was “rizz,” which means romantic appeal or charm, and is an online evolution of the word charisma. If you hadn’t noticed yet, clearly the internet is taking over our lives. This year, there were six contenders for word of the year including demure, slop, dynamic pricing, romantasy, and lore. Demure was also related to social media because it was part of a sarcastic online trend where women would say “very mindful, very demure,” in situations that were not really so. Slop — a word I had never heard in this context — also relates to technology. Oxford University Press defines it as “art, writing, or other content generated using artificial intelligence, shared and distributed online in an indiscriminate or intrusive way, and characterized as being of low quality, inauthentic, or inaccurate.” Oh boy, there’s a lot of slop out there. I think we’ve all recently seen the effects of dynamic pricing, the fourth-word candidate for this year, with this weekend’s Taylor Swift concerts and their effect on hotel and Airbnb accommodations, and Uber and Lyft ride-sharing. Dynamic pricing is when the pricing changes, very quickly, based on demand, something that only became possible with the rise of the internet. The fifth contender was lore – the background information necessary to understand someone or something. As a journalist, I’m a big fan of lore, specifically trying to keep it truthful and accurate. The final word is romantasy, which is a book genre combining romance and fantasy, also a word that arose out of BookTok, a subspace of TikTok, another social media application. All these words reflect a growing trend of words emerging first on social media and then being used offline, in real life. Social media shows no signs of fading from our daily life. On the contrary, a survey conducted by Leger DGTL , a digital agency that combines research and marketing, found that 63 per cent of Canadians use Facebook at least once a day. Among people with a Facebook account between the ages of 16 and 24, the prime use of Facebook is to search for people or accounts, for people between the ages of 25 and 44, the prime use is to buy or to sell something and for those older than 45, the prime use is to interact with people and content. That’s just Facebook, an older social media, that isn’t super popular among young people. For people aged 16 to 24, Instagram is the one platform they would keep if they could only keep one, the survey found. Other interesting tidbits: people use TikTok to learn things, like cooking or repairs, while YouTube is used both for simple entertainment and for learning how to do things. The survey was conducted among 4,004 respondents, online – of course – among the general population between Aug. 5 and 17, 2024. Meanwhile, Australia has banned social media use for anyone under the age of 16, in a bid to increase online safety. Personally, I think that like everything else, it’s all about balance. Managing a healthy use of social media means setting boundaries for yourself and others in terms of your use and how much of your life you want to share. There have been noted tragic examples of the ruin the internet can bring, such as the story of Amanda Todd , a teenage girl who took her own life after being sexually extorted online. In addition, social media companies are owned by billionaires or foreign countries – we need to be careful about the information we share with them and how much control we give them over our lives. Over this coming holiday, I’m going to try to limit social media and the associated brain rot, in favour of spending time talking and laughing with family, playing games, eating delicious foods and getting as cozy as possible. Let’s see what happens. Tracy Sherlock is a freelance journalist who writes about education and social issues. Read her blog or email her [email protected] . Got an opinion on this story or any others in Richmond? Send us a letter or email your thoughts or story tips to [email protected] . To stay updated on Richmond news, sign up for our daily headline newsletter . Words missing in article? Your adblocker might be preventing hyperlinked text from appearing.
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DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Russian state news agencies are reporting that ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad has arrived in Moscow with his family and given asylum. The agencies, Tass and RIA, cited an unidentified Kremlin source. The Associated Press was not immediately able to verify the reports but has contacted the Kremlin for comment. RIA also cited an anonymous Kremlin source that Moscow had received guarantees from Syrian insurgents of the security of Russian military bases and diplomatic posts in Syria. The report did not give further details. Assad reportedly left Syria early Sunday. Syrians have been pouring into streets echoing with celebratory gunfire after a stunning rebel advance reached the capital, ending the Assad family’s 50 years of iron rule . THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below. DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syrians poured into streets echoing with celebratory gunfire on Sunday after a stunning rebel advance reached the capital, ending the Assad family's 50 years of iron rule but raising questions about the future of the country and the wider region. Joyful crowds gathered in squares in Damascus, waving the Syrian revolutionary flag in scenes that recalled the early days of the Arab Spring uprising, before a brutal crackdown and the rise of an insurgency plunged the country into a nearly 14-year civil war. Others gleefully ransacked the presidential palace and residence after President Bashar Assad and other top officials vanished, their whereabouts unknown. Russia, a close ally, said Assad left the country after negotiations with rebel groups and had given instructions to transfer power peacefully. Abu Mohammed al-Golani , a former al-Qaida commander who cut ties with the group years ago and says he embraces pluralism and religious tolerance, leads the biggest rebel faction and is poised to chart the country's future. In his first public appearance since fighters entered the Damascus suburbs Saturday, al-Golani visited the sprawling Umayyad Mosque and called Assad's fall “a victory to the Islamic nation.” Calling himself by his given name, Ahmad al-Sharaa, and not his nom de guerre, he told hundreds of people that Assad had made Syria “a farm for Iran’s greed.” The rebels face the daunting task of healing bitter divisions in a country ravaged by war and still split among armed factions. Turkey-backed opposition fighters are battling U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in the north, and the Islamic State group is still active in some remote areas. Syrian state television broadcast a rebel statement early Sunday saying Assad had been overthrown and all prisoners had been released. They called on people to preserve the institutions of “the free Syrian state.” The rebels later announced a curfew in Damascus from 4 p.m. to 5 a.m. The rebels said they freed people held at the notorious Saydnaya prison, where rights groups say thousands were tortured and killed . A video circulating online purported to show rebels breaking open cell doors and freeing dozens of female prisoners, many of whom appeared shocked. At least one small child was seen among them. “This happiness will not be completed until I can see my son out of prison and know where is he,” said one relative, Bassam Masr. "I have been searching for him for two hours. He has been detained for 13 years.” Rebel commander Anas Salkhadi later appeared on state TV and sought to reassure Syria's religious and ethnic minorities, saying: “Syria is for everyone, no exceptions. Syria is for Druze, Sunnis, Alawites, and all sects.” “We will not deal with people the way the Assad family did," he added. Celebrations in the capital Damascus residents prayed in mosques and celebrated in squares, calling, “God is great.” People chanted anti-Assad slogans and honked car horns. Teenage boys picked up weapons apparently discarded by security forces and fired into the air. Revelers filled Umayyad Square, where the Defense Ministry is located. Some waved the three-starred Syrian flag that predates the Assad government and was adopted by the revolutionaries. Elsewhere, many parts of the capital were empty and shops were closed. Soldiers and police left their posts and fled, and looters broke into the Defense Ministry. Videos showed families wandering the presidential palace, some carrying stacks of plates and other household items. “It’s like a dream. I need someone to wake me up," said opposition fighter Abu Laith, adding the rebels were welcomed in Damascus with “love.” At the Justice Ministry, where rebels stood guard, Judge Khitam Haddad said they were protecting documents from the chaos. Outside, some residents sought information about relatives who disappeared under Assad. The rebels “have felt the pain of the people,” said one woman, giving only her first name, Heba. She worried about possible revenge killings by the rebels, many of whom appeared to be underage. Syria’s al-Watan newspaper, which was historically pro-government, wrote: “We are facing a new page for Syria. We thank God for not shedding more blood.” It added that media workers should not be blamed for publishing past government statements, saying it “only carried out the instructions.” A statement from the Alawite sect that has formed the core of Assad's base called on young Syrians to be “calm, rational and prudent and not to be dragged into what tears apart the unity of our country.” The rebels mainly come from the Sunni Muslim majority in Syria, which also has sizable Druze, Christian and Kurdish communities. In Qamishli in the northeast, a Kurdish man slapped a statue of the late leader Hafez Assad with his shoe. Assad's whereabouts are unknown Syrian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi Jalali said the government was ready to “extend its hand” to the opposition and turn its functions over to a transitional government. A video shared on Syrian opposition media showed armed men escorting him from his office and to the Four Seasons hotel on Sunday. Rami Abdurrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told The Associated Press that Assad, 59, took a flight early Sunday from Damascus. A senior diplomat from the United Arab Emirates, which had sought to rehabilitate Assad's image and has welcomed high-profile exiles in recent years, declined to comment on his whereabouts. Anwar Gargash said Assad's destination at this point is a “footnote in history,” comparing it to the long exile of German Kaiser Wilhelm II after World War I. Calls for an orderly transition The rebel advances since Nov. 27 were the largest in recent years, and saw the cities of Aleppo, Hama and Homs fall within days as the Syrian army melted away. Russia, Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, which provided crucial support to Assad throughout the uprising, abandoned him as they reeled from other conflicts. The end of Assad’s rule was a major blow to Iran and its allies, already weakened by conflict with Israel . Iran, which had strongly backed him throughout the civil war, said Syrians should decide their future “without destructive, coercive, foreign intervention.” The Iranian Embassy in Damascus was ransacked after apparently having been abandoned. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meanwhile said Israeli troops had seized a buffer zone in the Golan Heights established in 1974, saying it was to protect Israeli residents after Syrian troops abandoned positions. Israel's military later warned residents of five southern Syria communities to stay home for their safety, and didn’t respond to questions. Israel captured the Golan in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed it. The international community, except for the United States, views it as occupied, and the Arab League on Sunday condemned what it called Israel’s efforts to take advantage of Assad’s downfall occupy more territory. The rebels are led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS , which has its origins in al-Qaida and is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations. Al-Golani, has sought to recast the group as a moderate and tolerant force. “Golani has made history and sparked hope among millions of Syrians," said Dareen Khalifa, a senior adviser with the International Crisis Group. "But he and the rebels now face a formidable challenge ahead.” The U.N.’s special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, called Saturday for urgent talks in Geneva to ensure an “orderly political transition.” The Gulf nation of Qatar, a key regional mediator, hosted an emergency meeting of foreign ministers and top officials from eight countries with interests in Syria late Saturday. They included Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Turkey. Majed al-Ansari, Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, said they agreed on the need “to engage all parties on the ground," including the HTS, and that the main concern is “stability and safe transition.” ___ Sewell reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue, Sarah El Deeb and Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut; Samar Kassaballi, Omar Sanadiki and Ghaith Alsayed in Damascus; Jon Gambrell in Manama, Bahrain; Josef Federman in Doha, Qatar; and Tia Goldenberg in Jerusalem, contributed. Abdulrahman Shaheen And Abby Sewell, The Associated Press
I’m a scientist – going to state school was great for my careerSAN FRANCISCO , Dec. 26, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- AusperBio Therapeutics, Inc . and Ausper Biopharma Co., Ltd . (collectively AusperBio ), a privately held clinical-stage biotechnology company dedicated to advancing targeted oligonucleotide therapies to achieve a functional cure for chronic hepatitis B ( CHB ), today announced the successful completion of a USD 73 million Series B financing. The round was led by HanKang Capital , with participation from Sherpa Capital , CDH Investments , and a strategic investor, as well as continued participation from existing investors Qiming Venture Partners , InnoPinnacle Fund , and YuanBio Venture Capital . This financing followed the company's Series A round completed in July this year, demonstrating continued investor confidence in its proprietary platform and strategic direction. The proceeds will fund the continued Phase 2 development of AHB-137 , AusperBio's lead investigational therapy, supporting both clinical studies in China and global trials, as well as the development of commercial-scale manufacturing processes. The funding will also facilitate the expansion of the company's therapeutic pipeline and operational capabilities to drive sustained growth. Dr. Guofeng Cheng , co-founder and CEO of AusperBio, stated, " We are honored by our investors' confidence and support. This milestone financing recognizes our scientific and clinical accomplishments to date and enables us to accelerate our clinical programs and move closer to delivering a functional cure for CHB patients in need." Dr. Chris Yang , co-founder and CSO, added, "AHB-137 continues to attract attention from the scientific and clinical communities, particularly after the late-breaking oral presentation at the recent AASLD conference. The promising clinical data further validates our Med-OligoTM platform, strengthening our development of groundbreaking targeted oligonucleotide therapies for CHB and other serious chronic diseases." AusperBio is committed to delivering patient-centered innovations, aiming to alleviate the global health burden of CHB and transform treatment paradigms for this serious chronic disease. About AHB-137 AHB-137, a novel unconjugated antisense oligonucleotide ( ASO ) developed within AusperBio's proprietary Med-OligoTM ASO technology platform, was designed to treat chronic hepatitis B for a functional cure. Its compelling preclinical and Phase 1 clinical data were highlighted at the 2023 EASL conference and the 2024 EASL conference, respectively. Interim Phase 2a data was presented in a late-breaking oral session at the 2024 AASLD. This novel dual-mechanism ASO has completed its global Phase 1b trial and is now undergoing multiple Phase 2 trials in China . With its global development strategy, AHB-137 is advancing rapidly toward the goal of an HBV cure. About AusperBio. AusperBio is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company with operations in the USA and China , dedicated to advancing oligonucleotide and targeted delivery technologies for transformative therapies, with an initial focus on curing chronic hepatitis B infection. The company has developed a proprietary Med-OligoTM ASO platform which has been shown to substantially enhance the current ASO therapeutics, through novel insights into ASO design. Combining with efficient targeted delivery conjugation technologies, the modular Med-OligoTM Platform empowers ASO therapeutics to treat a broad range of diseases, including viral infections, metabolic conditions, genetic disorders, and immune diseases. For further information, please contact: Media Contact Email: info@ausperbio.com Investor Relations Contact: Tel: 650-888-1756 (US) Email: growth@ausperbio.com View original content to download multimedia: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ausperbio-secures-73-million-in-series-b-financing-to-advance-functional-cure-for-chronic-hepatitis-b-302339451.html SOURCE AusperBio Therapeutics Inc.