Category: Production

UN Human Rights chief Volker Turk on Friday called for a coordinated regional approach to protect thousands of Rohingya risking their lives on perilous sea voyages.

“More than 2,400 Rohingya have sought to leave Bangladesh and Myanmar in 2022 alone, and I am deeply saddened that over 200 have reportedly lost their lives on the way,” Turk said in a statement.

“Recent reports indicate that overcrowded and unsafe boats carrying Rohingyas have been left to drift for days on end without any help.”

He urged countries in the region to come up with a coordination mechanism “to ensure proactive search and rescue, the disembarkation of Rohingya refugees on their territories, and their effective protection.”

An urgent solution must be found to enable the voluntary return of all Rohingya, with “full respect of their dignity and human rights as full and equal citizens of Myanmar,” he added.

Bangladesh is currently hosting more than 1.2 million Rohingya, most of whom fled a brutal military crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine State in 2017.

Source: Anadolu Agency

The Algerian president has said “France must get rid of its colonizer complex,” according to local media.

“The relations between the two countries need — in order to cool down — France to liberate itself from its colonizer complex and Algeria from its colonized complex,” Abdelmadjid Tebboune told the French daily Le Figaro in an interview on Thursday.

He added that the image of Algeria must change as “the country is far more different than what it was in 1962.”

The Algerian leader announced his plans for an official visit to Paris in 2023, and said his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron “is the incarnation of a new generation that can save the relations between the two countries.”

Tebboune also noted the need to “depoliticize and leave to history certain parts of the colonization,” justifying the decision to set up commissions of historians on both sides.

He also urged France to “decontaminate the nuclear test scenes at Reggane and Tamanrasset (in southern Algeria) and cover medical treatments of the people in those areas.”

Source: Anadolu Agency

Türkiye’s first and only ice museum that opened in the eastern province of Erzurum has become one of the country’s focal points for winter tourism, hosting over 100,000 visitors so far.

The Ata Ice Museum, the only establishment of its kind in Türkiye, was opened in cooperation with Ataturk University and the Northeast Anatolian Development Agency (KUDAKA). It opened in 2020 at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Ataturk University in Erzurum, one of the cities where the winter season is harsh.

Since its opening in 2020, the museum hosted numerous solo exhibits and others under the themes “Republic and Child” and “Salt and Ice (Tuz Buz).” It displayed frozen works such as igloo homes and sculptures of Türkiye, its flag, a phoenix, the Trojan horse, Gobeklitepe and important symbols of Erzurum.

The museum, which contains ice sculptures illuminated with special lighting systems, takes visitors on a journey through the poles bundled up in coats due to the cold temperature inside.

Mustafa Bulat, dean of the Fine Arts Faculty of Ataturk University, told Anadolu Agency that the museum opened its doors to visitors on July 15, 2020.

It also has works of art concerned with social issues on display, Bulat said.

“The theme in our museum constantly changes. In about three to five months, the ice works are deformed, and we update our museum with new projects instead,” he explained.

Noting that many of the museum-goers came from schools, he added: “We can say that more than 100,000 visitors came to our museum.”

As it gains international recognition particularly via social media promotions, museum administrators plan to apply for the European Museum Award, making it a well-known brand.

Bulat stressed that they plan to organize an event in February with the participation of around 10 foreign artists by working with a private company.

The museum is constantly active, with students in sculpture departments take elective ice sculptures courses in the museum, he noted.

Children visit museum even during pandemic

“While people were unable to leave their homes during the pandemic, children were able to visit this place easily,” Bulat said.

He noted that the museum owns eight machines that make blocs of transparent ice to be used for sculptures to be displayed in the two-floor exhibition area of 400 square meters (about 4,300 sq feet) and displayed for the visitors.

The museum is also home to the ice sculptures of important locations in Anatolia, he said. “For example, there is a project from Sanliurfa’s Gobeklitepe, which is described as the ‘zero point in time’ dating back 12,000 years and a site on the UNESCO World Heritage List.”

As the museum is home to from 250-300 ice works, Bulat said they were always ready to host local and foreign visitors.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Patients at a doctors’ office in one English city got mistaken text messages saying they had a serious disease rather than the intended holiday greetings.

The Askern Medical Practice in the city of Doncaster meant to send messages two days before Dec. 25, Christmas, wishing their patients a “merry Christmas and happy New Year,” but instead sent out texts saying the recipient had aggressive lung cancer.

An hour later a second message informed patients of the error, apologizing, and gave holiday greetings. The GP surgery has some 8,000 patients.

Sarah Hargreaves, a patient who was waiting for medical test results, said she “broke down” when she got the text, the BBC reported.

Another patient said he initially wondered if the first text was “some kind of sick joke.”

No one at the GP office was available to comment to the BBC.

Source: Anadolu Agency

The Nasdaq rallied almost 2.6% Thursday as US stocks finished with big gains.

The tech-heavy index jumped 264 points, or 2.59%, to close at 10,478.

The S&P 500 rose 66 points, or 1.75%, to 3,849, while the Dow gained 345 points, or 1.95%, to finish at 33,220.

Electric carmaker Tesla saw its stock price soar more than 8%.

Apple gained 2.8% and streaming service provider Netflix rose 5.1% — both ending four trading days in the red.

The VIX volatility index, also known as the fear index, fell 3.2% to 21.44. The 10-year US Treasury yield decreased 1.4% to 3.830%.

The dollar index fell 0.53% to 103.92, while the euro gained 0.56% to $1.0667 against the greenback.

Precious metals were up, with gold climbing 0.6% to $1,815 per ounce and silver rising 1.5% to $23.90.

Crude oil prices were down less than 0.4%. Global benchmark Brent crude lost 0.3% to $83.75 per barrel, while US benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude slipped 0.37% to around $78.67.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies crashed in 2022 amid several crises, bankruptcies and market turmoil, while a lack of regulation and accountability has shaken investors’ confidence in digital currencies and tokens.

Cryptocurrencies made a strong start to the year with high optimism from crypto enthusiasts often using the expression: “To the Moon!” for Bitcoin and many altcoins — popular and unknown.

But macroeconomic uncertainty, interest rate increases by the US Federal Reserve and other central banks and inflation climbing to record levels slowly dimmed those high hopes.

Although crypto supporters saw Bitcoin and others as a hedge against record inflation and devaluation in fiat currencies, such as holding gold and silver against inflation, the view was soon dismissed as cryptos started plunging in the second quarter.

While central banks’ aggressive monetary tightening and rate hikes have lowered the amount of liquidity in the markets, they also prevented new investments, especially in the technology sector.

The cryptocurrency market became highly correlated to Nasdaq in late 2021 and the tech-heavy index plummeted a massive 34.3% in 2022 as of Wednesday.

The total market size of the crypto market dove to $792.7 billion Thursday — down almost 65% from the $2.25 trillion close in 2021. The market saw more than $1.4 trillion evaporate this year, according to data compiled by Anadolu Agency.

The value of the crypto market hit an all-time high of $3 trillion in November 2021 but saw more than $2.2 trillion wiped out since.

Bitcoin’s share of the crypto market, known as dominance, was around 40% Thursday, and its decline strongly affects other digital currencies and tokens.

The price of Bitcoin took a massive nosedive of 64% this year to around $16,630 as of Thursday, after finishing last year at $46,224. The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization climbed to its highest level of almost $48,163 on March 28, but it is down 65.5% from that figure.

Ethereum was trading around $1,200 on Thursday, which is a whopping 67.4% decline from its 2021 close of $3,677. The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap and the largest altcoin reached as high as almost $3,889 on Jan. 4 but it is down 69% from that level.

Luna stablecoin crash

Several crises surrounding stablecoins and exchange platforms also added fuel to the fire, which led to a firesale in the crypto market.

The crypto market saw $1 trillion evaporate in five weeks starting in early May as Bitcoin fell below $29,000 — its lowest in 16 months.

A stablecoin called TerraUSD, or UST, initially designed by Singapore-based Terraform Labs in 2018 to be pegged to $1, plummeted below $0.26 on May 11, creating fear, uncertainty and doubt among crypto enthusiasts.

While other popular stablecoins use their reserve cash and various assets to manage a 1-on-1 ratio against the dollar to present stability and avoid volatility. UST, on the other hand, uses an algorithm of burning and minting its sibling token Luna, and it enables UST to adjust its supply and manage a price close to $1.

With the price of UST in free fall, more Luna were burned to support the price of UST by Luna Foundation Guard.

Despite the efforts, Luna, once a top 10 coin, lost more than 95% of its value in a few days, while crypto investors were worried that the organization could dump billions of Bitcoin it owns to support UST.

Such fears were realized one week later when it was made public that the organization sold at least $2.1 billion of Bitcoin in 10 days, leading to a rapid decline in the value of other crypto coins and tokens.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen immediately urged American lawmakers about oversight concerning stablecoins after the TerraUSD price tanked.

FTX implosion

Once the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, FTX was in “a significant liquidity crunch,” according to Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao in early November.

Although FTX approached rival Binance for a buyout, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange by volume backed out from the deal. That led to a major sell-off in the crypto market and pulled Bitcoin’s price below $16,000 that month.

Gary Gensler, the head of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said Dec. 7 that cryptocurrency companies that facilitate transactions in the market should comply with existing laws. “The runway is getting shorter” between crypto firms’ compliance and enforcement of the SEC, he said.

A week later, FTX’s new CEO John J. Ray III told the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee that the company had “unacceptable management practices” under former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

While the SEC charged Bankman-Fried with defrauding investors on Dec. 13, two of his associates, co-founder and former CTO Gary Wang and Alameda Research’s former CEO Caroline Ellison, pleaded guilty to federal charges that include conspiracy to commit wire fraud, commodities fraud and securities fraud.

Bankman-Fried was extradited from the Bahamas to the US on Dec. 22 and immediately taken to the District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Facing eight charges, he was released on $250 million bail and has his next court hearing is Jan. 3 in the Manhattan court.

Bankruptcies

Fraudulent activities, online scams, massive hacks, bankruptcies and global celebrities promoting coins and tokens that went bust were other crises during the highly deregulated and decentralized crypto market.

Singapore-based crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital lost more than $3 billion in 2021 and 2022, becoming the first major crypto company to go bankrupt this year on July 3.

Three Arrows Capital’s demise immediately caused a domino effect, as it did not repay loans of more than $660 million to cryptocurrency firm Voyager Digital, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection July 5.

Crypto lending firm Celsius Network, which managed $12 billion in assets in June, also filed for bankruptcy July 13.

And, digital asset lender BlockFi filed for bankruptcy Nov. 28, two weeks after announcing it had “significant exposure” to FTX.

2022 could be remembered as “the crypto winter” and a major turning point for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies — either with high hopes turning into shattered dreams for investors, or lessons learned in a deregulated market with early technology that is still taking baby steps.

Source: Anadolu Agency