YouTube hires former Disney veteran to oversee sports and media

YouTube inked a $14 billion NFL streaming deal in 2022, which enables it to stream big football matches. (Reuters)
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Updated 23 May 2025
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YouTube hires former Disney veteran to oversee sports and media

  • The platform has also expanded beyond traditional video sharing and into live TV

Alphabet’s YouTube has hired long-time Walt Disney executive Justin Connolly to serve as its global head of media and sports, the company said on Thursday, as the video service pushes further into sports and traditional media.
Connolly will manage the platform’s relationships with major media companies as well as take charge of the company’s growing live-sports portfolio, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The popular video sharing platform has been aggressively pursuing live sports for the past few years, alongside competitors such as Netflix and Amazon, in a bid to take advantage of its massive user base and large sports audience.
YouTube inked a $14 billion NFL streaming deal in 2022, which enables it to stream big football matches, while Amazon and other media firms also rushed to secure big sports streaming deals.
The platform has also expanded beyond traditional video sharing and into live TV, music and podcasts, and generates billions in advertising revenue from its vast content reserves.
Connolly spent over two decades at ESPN and Disney and exited his role as head of platform distribution earlier this week as Disney gears up to launch its ESPN sports streaming platform. 


Despite rainy weather, Catholics in a Paraguayan town dress as birds to honor their patron saint

Updated 25 July 2025
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Despite rainy weather, Catholics in a Paraguayan town dress as birds to honor their patron saint

  • Participants dressing up in feather garments are known as “promisers”
  • As part of the rituals, they cover their faces, imitate birds and distort their voices when speaking.

EMBOSCADA, Paraguay: The rainy weather did not prevent Blanca Servín from dressing her 7-year-old son like a bird. They joined a procession honoring St. Francis Solanus, the patron saint of a town in Paraguay about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the capital city of Asunción.

Like her child, dozens of Catholics in Emboscada wear elaborate feathered garments each July 24. Dressing up is a ritual aimed at fulfilling promises made to the Spanish friar, who was a missionary in South America during the 16th century and is believed to grant miracles.

“I couldn’t have children,” Servín said. “I underwent several treatments and when I finally got pregnant and my child was born, the doctors said he would barely live for a few days.”

She then prayed to St. Francis Solanus and made a promise many parishioners make: If you do this for me, I will honor you on your feast day for seven years.

“My son is almost 7, and I have kept my promise,” Servín said. “But we will keep coming.”

Dressing in feathers

Participants dressing up in feather garments are known as “promisers.” As part of the rituals, they cover their faces, imitate birds and distort their voices when speaking.

Marcos Villalba said he spent three months crafting his costume. He worked on it every other day and said his father and brothers have also been long-time promisers.

Sulma Villalba — not related to Marcos — devoted six months to the task. Rather than wearing a costume herself, she patiently glued hundreds feathers to her children’s and husband’s clothing. Like Servín, she has already fulfilled the promise she made to St. Francis to protect her family, but she said they still honor him because it has become a tradition they enjoy.

A missionary to Indigenous people

According to Ireneo López, a layperson in charge of recreational activities at the Emboscada parish, St. Francis is remembered as a missionary who evangelized the Indigenous people through music. The first church in his honor was erected in the 1930s. As parishioners increased, a new building was built later.

López said that participants use up to 30 hens, guinea fowls and geese to craft their costumes.

“These garments represent what people used to wear in ancient times,” he added. “Gala suits were made with what nature provided: birds.”

Jessica López, who attended the festival with her two children and a niece, said she gathered feathers for months. Before crafting the costumes a week ago, her family enjoyed a banquet with a hen they specifically picked for the occasion.

She, too, asked St. Francis for good health, but said parishioners request all sorts of miracles. About 2,500 area residents join the feast every year.

Processions and dances honoring St. Francis start on July 22. The night before the feast day, a local family takes home a wooden figure depicting the friar in order to decorate it for the festivities.

On July 24, promisers and parishioners attend Mass at the St. Francis chapel, then lead a procession and end up dancing in front of the church.

A tale of land and dispute

According to historian Ana Barreto, the ancient context of the feast is as fascinating as the feast itself. It is celebrated in a territory that was disputed by two Indigenous people — the Guaraní and the Chacoan — before the Spaniards came in the 16th century.

The Europeans eventually subdued the Guaraní, but the Chacoan kept defending the land even after descendants of formerly enslaved people from Africa settled there.

“The Indigenous people sought to steal young women, take weapons and other valuable objects, and set the ranches on fire,” Barreto said.

Not all current participants in the St. Francis feast are aware of this, but their costumes and celebrations are a remembrance of this historic episode.

According to Barreto, the Guaraní name of the event, “Guaykurú Ñemondé,” translates as “dressing like a barbarian.” Thus Guaraní participants are dressing as their ancestral enemies.

The reason might be hidden in an ancient Guaraní rite. After battling the Chacoan, the Guaraní people kept their prisoners alive. They provided them with food and energizing drinks, and encouraged them to have sex with their women. Afterwards, they killed the prisoners and cooked them, serving them as a meal at a community banquet.

“In this way, the enemy strengthened the Guaraní,” Barreto said.


Banksy work ‘The Migrant Child’ removed from Venetian palazzo for restoration and future display

Updated 25 July 2025
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Banksy work ‘The Migrant Child’ removed from Venetian palazzo for restoration and future display

MILAN: Art restorers have removed a deteriorating piece of graffiti by the street artist Banksy titled “The Migrant Child” from the side of a building overlooking a Venetian canal to preserve the work for future public display, officials said Thursday.
The removal from the wall of Palazzo San Pantalon was carried out in consultation with people close to the secretive British street artist, according to the Venice-based bank Banca Ifis’ art program that promotes art and culture.
The artwork depicting a shipwrecked child holding a pink smoke bomb and wearing a lifejacket appeared along Rio di San Pantalon in Venice in May 2019, and was acknowledged by Banksy. Marked on online maps, it has become a tourist destination.
But six years of neglect had led to the deterioration of about a third of the work, the bank said.
The restoration is being overseen by Federico Borgogni, who previously removed dust and cleaned the surface before detaching a section of the palazzo’s facade overnight Wednesday, Banca Ifis said in a statement. The bank is financing the project, but didn’t release the cost of the operation.
The bank intends to display the work to the public as part of free cultural events organized by Ifis art once restoration is completed. No time frame was given.


Zookeepers in Prague turn into puppeteers to save baby vultures

Updated 24 July 2025
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Zookeepers in Prague turn into puppeteers to save baby vultures

  • The first-born is being kept in a box and fed using a puppet designed to mimic a parent bird
  • The puppet is needed to make sure the bird will be capable of breeding

PRAGUE: Zookeepers in Prague sometimes have to become puppeteers to save newborn birds rejected by their parents. This was the case for a lesser yellow-headed vulture chick hatched three weeks ago.

Bird keeper Antonín Vaidl said Thursday that when a dummy egg disappeared from the nest, it signaled to keepers that the parents were not ready to care for their two babies, despite doing so in 2022 and 2023.

The first-born is being kept in a box and fed using a puppet designed to mimic a parent bird, while another is expected to hatch in the next few days.

Vaidl said the puppet is needed to make sure the bird will be capable of breeding, which it won’t if it gets used to human interaction.

He explained that the puppet doesn’t have to be a perfect replica of an adult bird because the chick responds to certain signals, such as the pale orange coloration on its featherless head and neck.

Lesser yellow-headed vultures live in the wild in Latin America and Mexico. Prague Zoo is one of only three zoos in Europe that breed them.

In the past, the park successfully applied this treatment to save the critically endangered Javan green magpie and two rhinoceros hornbill chicks. The puppet-feeding technique is applicable for birds that live in pairs.

“The method has been working well,” Vaidl said. “We’ll see what happens with the vultures.”


Small Brazilian coffee producers fear for the future after Trump’s 50 percent tariff

Updated 24 July 2025
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Small Brazilian coffee producers fear for the future after Trump’s 50 percent tariff

  • Experts warn the tariff will hit small producers hardest, as they lack resources to adapt quickly or find new markets for their crops

PORCIUNCULA: Brazilian José Natal da Silva often tends to his modest coffee plantation in the interior of Rio de Janeiro state in the middle of the night, sacrificing sleep to fend off pests that could inflict harm on his precious crops.
But anxiety has troubled his shut-eye even more in recent weeks, following President Donald Trump’s announcement earlier this month of a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian imported goods, which experts expect to drive down the price of coffee in Brazil.
Da Silva sighed as he recounted his fears, sitting on the dry earth surrounded by his glossy green arabica coffee shrubs, in the small municipality of Porciuncula.
“We’re sad because we struggle so much. We spend years battling to get somewhere. And suddenly, everything starts falling apart, and we’re going to lose everything,” da Silva said. “How are we going to survive?”
Tariff linked to Bolsonaro trial
Trump’s tariff on Brazil is overtly political. In his public letter detailing the reasons for the hike, the US president called the trial of his ally, former President Jair Bolsonaro, a ” witch hunt.” Bolsonaro is accused of masterminding a coup to overturn his 2022 election loss to left-leaning President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The tariff has sparked ripples of fear in Brazil, particularly among sectors with deep ties to the American market such as beef, orange juice — and coffee. Minor coffee producers say the import tax will hit their margins and adds to the uncertainty already generated by an increasingly dry and unpredictable climate.
Brazil, the world’s largest coffee producer, exports around 85 percent of its production. The United States is the country’s top coffee buyer and represents around 16 percent of exports, according to Brazil’s coffee exporters council Cecafe.
The president of Cecafe’s deliberative council, Márcio Ferreira, told journalists last week that he thinks the US will continue to import Brazilian coffee, even with the hefty tariff. “It’s obvious that neither the United States nor any other source can give up on Brazil, even if it’s tariffed,” he said.
Tariff could hurt competitiveness of Brazilian coffee in US
But the tariff will likely decrease Brazilian coffee’s competitiveness in the US and naturally reduce demand, said Leandro Gilio, a professor of global agribusiness at Insper business school in Sao Paulo.
“There’s no way we can quickly redirect our coffee production to other markets,” Gilio said. “This principally affects small producers, who have less financial power to make investments or support themselves in a period like this.”
Family farmers produce more than two-thirds of Brazilian coffee. They are a majority in Rio state’s northwestern region, where most of the state’s coffee production lies.
Coffee farming is the primary economic activity in these municipalities. In Porciuncula, which neighbors Brazil’s largest coffee-producing state Minas Gerais, gentle mountains are layered with symmetrical lines of coffee shrubs.
Da Silva, who wore a straw hat for protection from the sun and a crucifix around his neck, owns around 40,000 coffee trees. He started working in the fields when he was 12.
Besides coffee, he grows cassava, squash, bananas, oranges and lemons and has a few chickens that provide fresh eggs. “We have them because of the fear of not being able to eat. We wouldn’t manage if everything were bought, because the profit is very low,” he said.
Last year, drought — made more likely by human-caused climate change — devastated large swathes of da Silva’s production. The reduction in supply pushed coffee prices up, but only after many small-scale farmers had already sold all their crops.
Since peaking in February, prices of arabica have fallen, dropping 33 percent by July, according to the University of Sao Paulo’s Center for Advanced Studies in Applied Economics, which provides renowned commodity price reports.
“When you make an investment, counting on a certain price for coffee, and then when you go to sell it the price is 20-30 percent less than you calculated, it breaks the producers,” said Paulo Vitor Menezes Freitas, 31, who also owns a modest plantation of around 35,000 coffee trees in the nearby municipality of Varre-Sai.
The demands of coffee farming
Life out in the fields is tough, according to Menezes Freitas.
During harvest season, he sometimes gets up at 3 a.m. to turn on a coffee drier, going to bed as late as midnight. The rest of the year is less intense, but still, there are few to no breaks because there’s always work to do, he said.
Menezes Freitas, who is expecting his first child in October, said the tariff’s announcement increased his fears for the future.
“It’s scary. It feels like you’re on shaky ground. If things get worse, what will we do? People will start pulling out their coffee and finding other ways to survive because they won’t have the means to continue,” he said.
In addition to slashing the value of his coffee beans, Menezes Freitas said the tariff will impact machinery and aluminum — goods that producers like him use every day.
“We hope this calms down. Hopefully, they’ll come to their senses and remove that tariff. I think it would be better for both the United States and Brazil,” he said.


Bermuda shorts, beachwear and a local ban divide Algerian town

Updated 23 July 2025
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Bermuda shorts, beachwear and a local ban divide Algerian town

  • A dispute over men’s swimwear is dividing an Algerian beach town. Earlier this month, the mayor of Chetaïbi banned Bermuda shorts, calling them indecent

CHETAIBI: A scenic beach town on Algeria’s Mediterranean coastline has become the center of a clash over men’s bathing suits, pitting religious and conservative values against tourist habits.
Chetaïbi, a town of 8,000 known for its turquoise waters, rocky coves, and forested hills, draws thousands of Algerian beachgoers each summer. Seasonal tourism is a cornerstone of the local economy.
“The mood is warm, welcoming, colorful, bustling — no hostility toward bathers, not in words, not in looks. People here have a tradition of hospitality,” said Salah Edine Bey, a longtime resident.
In his view, there was little sign of controversy, until there was.
Earlier this month, some vacationers and business owners were caught off guard when the town’s mayor issued a decree banning beachgoers from walking around in Bermuda shorts, calling the attire indecent in contrast to the longer, looser shorts preferred by conservative male beachgoers.
“These summer outfits disturb the population, they go against our society’s moral values and sense of decency,” Mayor Layachi Allaoua wrote.
“The population can no longer tolerate seeing foreigners wandering the streets in indecent clothing,” he added, referencing visitors from elsewhere in Algeria.
The order sparked immediate backlash from officials, including in the regional capital Annaba, who called on the mayor to revoke it.
The mayor reversed the decree within two days. On Facebook, he insisted his order wasn’t driven by Islamist pressure, but by a desire to preserve “peace and tranquility” for both residents and guests.
Still, the episode tapped into deeper tensions over religion, identity, and public space in a country that remains haunted by a civil war that killed an estimated 200,000 people throughout the 1990s. The conflict began in 1991, when the army canceled elections that an Islamist party was set to win.
The so-called “black decade” ended long ago. But it left unresolved some underlying friction between political Islam and Algeria’s military-backed secular state.
“Even though Islamists lost the war in the 1990s, they never gave up on their invasive and intrusive ideological project, which has gained ground in society,” said sociologist Redouane Boudjemaâ.
For some, the beach debate echoed that earlier era, when Islamist-run municipalities tried to reshape public life in line with religious doctrine. For many Algerians, particularly in underserved regions, political Islam remains popular not out of extremism, but as a reaction to corruption, inequality, and distrust in state institutions. While Islamist parties have mostly fared poorly at the ballot box, they play a large role in daily life, filling social and moral voids.
In neighboring Jijel, residents have roped off parts of the beach for mass prayers, with videos of the scenes circulating online and dividing opinion.
For Halim Kabir, it’s a stark reminder of the past. In the 1990s, Islamists who won local elections in Jijel imposed stricter rules on public behavior. Today, cars parked near the beach have been vandalized with warnings telling beachgoers to “go sin elsewhere.”
“It’s provocation,” Kabir said. “An attempt to drive away visitors from other regions.”
Said Boukhlifa, a former senior official at the Ministry of Tourism, warned that conservative groups are exploiting Algeria’s economic troubles, as falling gas revenues strain the state, to expand their influence. That, he said, could undermine the country’s ambitions to grow its tourism sector.