Latest news with #Atta
Sydney Morning Herald
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Vivid Live: A triumphant orchestral excursion with Sigur Ros and the SSO
VIVID LIVE SIGUR ROS Opera House Concert Hall, May 23. Also May 24 and 25. Reviewed by ROD YATES ★★★★ Before starting this tour, Icelandic three-piece Sigur Ros were at pains to point out these shows would be more than just a traditional group performance with the backing of an orchestra. Indeed, bassist Georg Holm told this masthead that concertgoers would be seeing 'the orchestral version of the band'. And so it is that when the trio follow British conductor Robert Ames onstage, each member clad uniformly in black, they position themselves among the already seated Sydney Symphony Orchestra, rather than at the front of the stage. The message is clear: Sigur Ros are a part of the ensemble, no more or less important than the 41 musicians surrounding them. It's a point made time and again throughout this two-hour excursion through the band's cinematic, often ethereal catalogue, from the title track of their 1997 debut album Von to material from their latest, 2023's Atta. The rich cellos that usher in Untitled #1 – Vaka lend it a warmer, more sombre gravitas than its recorded counterpart; the rousing oompah climax of the exquisite Se Lest benefits from the added bombast, one of the rare occasions the orchestra takes full-blooded flight. The very presence of the SSO affords the band the opportunity to realise the string-laden Staralfur in all its glory, a feat they long stopped trying in their more traditional live shows. Loading They are masters of navigating dynamic musical ebbs and flows; as Ekki Mukk draws to a close and the orchestra slowly dissipates, Kjartan Sveinsson's haunting keyboard refrain is rendered even more fragile by virtue of the sound that came before it, a contrast that renders the audience completely silent as the notes fade to a whisper. On occasion the songs do tend to blend into one another, vocalist Jonsi Birgisson's majestic falsetto (an instrument in itself) gliding above the sweeping strings. It would, however, be a disservice to label it repetitive – instead the effect is more hypnotic and dreamlike, as though the entire Opera House is one giant, fully immersive sound bath.
The Age
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Vivid Live: A triumphant orchestral excursion with Sigur Ros and the SSO
VIVID LIVE SIGUR ROS Opera House Concert Hall, May 23. Also May 24 and 25. Reviewed by ROD YATES ★★★★ Before starting this tour, Icelandic three-piece Sigur Ros were at pains to point out these shows would be more than just a traditional group performance with the backing of an orchestra. Indeed, bassist Georg Holm told this masthead that concertgoers would be seeing 'the orchestral version of the band'. And so it is that when the trio follow British conductor Robert Ames onstage, each member clad uniformly in black, they position themselves among the already seated Sydney Symphony Orchestra, rather than at the front of the stage. The message is clear: Sigur Ros are a part of the ensemble, no more or less important than the 41 musicians surrounding them. It's a point made time and again throughout this two-hour excursion through the band's cinematic, often ethereal catalogue, from the title track of their 1997 debut album Von to material from their latest, 2023's Atta. The rich cellos that usher in Untitled #1 – Vaka lend it a warmer, more sombre gravitas than its recorded counterpart; the rousing oompah climax of the exquisite Se Lest benefits from the added bombast, one of the rare occasions the orchestra takes full-blooded flight. The very presence of the SSO affords the band the opportunity to realise the string-laden Staralfur in all its glory, a feat they long stopped trying in their more traditional live shows. Loading They are masters of navigating dynamic musical ebbs and flows; as Ekki Mukk draws to a close and the orchestra slowly dissipates, Kjartan Sveinsson's haunting keyboard refrain is rendered even more fragile by virtue of the sound that came before it, a contrast that renders the audience completely silent as the notes fade to a whisper. On occasion the songs do tend to blend into one another, vocalist Jonsi Birgisson's majestic falsetto (an instrument in itself) gliding above the sweeping strings. It would, however, be a disservice to label it repetitive – instead the effect is more hypnotic and dreamlike, as though the entire Opera House is one giant, fully immersive sound bath.
The Guardian
03-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘It's been traumatic': the inside story of Tell Mama's break with Labour government
For 13 years, Tell Mama has been the government-funded not-for-profit tasked with recording anti-Muslim hate crime and helping victims get justice. For its pains, staff faced death threats from the far right, a risk so serious it necessitated an office change at the height of the hate. There have been critics too within Britain's Muslim community, who, according to the Tell Mama leadership, were intolerant of the organisation's tolerance. 'Throughout the 13 years, people have been kind of making up what Tell Mama does,' said Iman Atta, who has been the organisation's director since 2016. 'They claim that we're Zionists because we work with Jewish communities, or we're promoting pedophilia because we work with LGBT groups,' she added. Most recently, questions have been raised about how the organisation spent public money, collated its data, and whether it had become too close to the previous Conservative government, which signed off on its funding. This latest challenge has been existential. On 1 April, Atta wrote to Wajid Khan, the new Labour minister for faith, to reject a further six months of funding from the government, citing a strained relationship with his department and the stress caused to staff by 'malicious campaigns' some of which 'emanated from individuals and organisations' chasing the funding that Tell Mama has enjoyed. It means that, at a time of soaring bigotry, there is now no government-funded group carrying out anti-Muslim hate monitoring in the UK and this is expected to be the case into the summer. Atta said Tell Mama would continue to do its work and look for funds from elsewhere but it fully expects to pare back its services. There will be critics of Tell Mama who are celebrating the outcome. Those might include Shaista Gohir, a cross-bencher in the Lords and paid adviser to the Muslim Women's Network, who has criticised the quality of the organisation's data and attacked Atta's 'inflation busting' salary rise in 2024, up to £93,000 from £77,000 the year before. Lady Gohir was also behind a 10-page letter to the ministry raising such questions as why Tell Mama was run as a community interest company (CIC) rather than a charity. She wanted to know why it did not publish full accounts on Companies House and asked whether the co-founder of Tell Mama Fiyaz Mughal, who is Atta's former husband, had received any referrals from the organisation. He is now a counsellor. Sayeeda Warsi, a former Conservative party chair, who as a minister played a role in establishing the Tell Mama model, may also be satisfied. Last year, she followed Gohir to speak in a Lords debate of her 'deep concerns' about Tell Mama's 'finances, governance, associations and connections, including with the now-defunct Quilliam Foundation – which has associations with thinktanks in the United States that are peddling anti-Muslim hatred and Islamophobia'. For her part, Atta said she found it all difficult to understand. A Palestinian who moved to the UK in 2008, she had been travelling back and forth to Jerusalem to see her mother, who died last in August from complications relating to dementia. She saw the rockets overhead and then would come home to critics asking why she was silent over the Palestinian cause. The atmosphere, she says, has been toxic. But she is fierce in her defence of Tell Mama's record and points to a range of public sources that appear to justify her position. The government had never criticised the level of detail in Tell Mama's data. Reports were published online. The police had spoken of it as being invaluable, and her salary had gone up due to the huge rise in work load in the wake of 7 October attacks. 'I don't have weekends,' she said. Faith Matters, the CIC that runs Tell Mama, was set up more than a decade ago that way so that it could work in a range of social justice areas and not be restricted to one charitable cause. The ministry had full sight of their finances. Atta is particularly indignant about the suggestion Mughal, benefited from counselling referrals. 'We wouldn't, that's a conflict of interest,' she said. As to the alleged, connection to the Quilliam Foundation there was one appearance in 2013 by Tell Mama's founder at one of its events where he was invited to promote the anti-hatred reporting service. 'And that's it,' she said. A spokesperson for the ministry of housing, local government and communities said they were still keen for Tell Mama to continue. 'We offered Tell MAMA £500,000 to continue supporting its expert work in this space for the first half of this financial year, which was declined', she said. 'We are grateful for their work since 2012 and welcome an application again to look at new proposals.' The defence is robust, the government adamant in its support, so why the war of words among high-profile figures who appear to share the same mission of fostering better engagement with British Muslim communities? It was, in Atta's view in some instances, a 'smear campaign', perhaps motivated by a desire by some for the £1m-a-year funding agreed by the last Conservative government. Her detractors deny this. 'I think that's probably me [Atta is referring to],' says Gohir, 'At the end of the day, this has got nothing to do with funding. I mean, of course, now there's an open bid Muslim Women's Network will apply, because we run a helpline already. We already get hate crime calls and discrimination calls, so why not? But that's not why I did this. 'We contacted them, we weren't getting the data, so we were then finding our own data by doing FoIs to police forces, you know, and then when I was writing to government, I wasn't getting my questions being answered. And it's my right as a taxpayer, as a Muslim taxpayer.' Whatever the rights of the wrongs of the criticisms, and Gohir said her question about referrals to Atta's former husband had been a hunch rather than based on any knowledge, it was not this alone that brought Tell Mama to the decision to pull away. What appears to have made the situation untenable was what has all the hallmarks of a classic Whitehall bungle. The last government had agreed in March last year to provide Tell Mama with a further year's grant funding. The money is usually paid in arrears in instalments every three months on receipt of invoices and evidence of work. But it needs a grant funding agreement to be signed. Due to last year's general election, no such agreement emerged from the government in the early months of this financial year. Nothing then emerged through the summer but Tell Mama continued to do its work, without being paid, not least because of the riots after the Southport stabbings. Then on 23 September, Atta received a letter from the ministry saying that a grant agreement had been prepared but the new government wanted to put the contract out to competitive tender for 25/26. It wasn't welcome news after working with the government for 11 years. But it was not necessarily the end. In December, a grant funding agreement was produced. It contained an 'exit plan' in the event that Tell Mama did not win the competitive tender. The government was proposing that Tell Mama be prepared to transfer over their software, hardware and key employees to whatever body took over the function, she said. A 'handover', said Atta. 'I was shocked.' A government spokesperson said this was a misinterpretation. But at a meeting on 23 December, Atta told the officials that the terms were unacceptable, the demands were eventually removed and an apology offered, she said. But as Atta was ready to sign in March, Gohir again raised her concerns in the Lords. Lord Khan put out a statement giving Tell Mama a clean bill of health and praising its work and a six-month grant extension was offered. Atta signed the agreement to allow Tell Mama to be paid for the service over the last year. But she said the alleged 'smearing' of her organisation felt relentless. It felt like she was going through a personal 'trauma', Atta added. It was a relief, she said, to finally tell the minister, who had personally been helpful, that they were declining the offer of further funding and would not be applying for the contract. 'I had team members coming up like: we're just really tired,' she said. 'Because you're getting things on the online world, you're getting the threats, you're getting the far right, you're getting the Islamist extremists, and then you're getting smeared for actually doing your work.'
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
County scores poorly in national air pollution report
The American Lung Association gave Ashtabula County a D grade in its 2025 State of the Air Report. The ALA's annual report analyzed pollution across the United States based on data from the Environmental Protection Agency from 2021 to 2023. The county had nine orange days, which meant air quality was unhealthy for sensitive groups, due to high amounts of ozone gas. Ozone gas is created when nitrogen oxide pollution and volatile organic compound pollution reacts under sunlight. Both pollutants are common products of fossil fuels. ALA Director of Advocacy for Ohio and Michigan Kezia Ofosu Atta said when inhaled, ozone gas can cause asthma and harm to the cardiovascular, reproductive and nervous system. Lake and Cuyahoga counties both got an F for high ozone days, while Trumbull and Geauga counties got Cs. Erie County, Pennsylvania received a C. Data was not available for Crawford County, Pennsylvania. The state of the air report also looked into particle pollution, which is also a product of fossil fuels. The report included information on the the Cleveland-Akron-Canton metro area, which Atta said includes Ashtabula County. 'Six metro areas experienced levels of air pollution that moved them onto the Worst 25 list,' the report said. '[Greater Cleveland] posted the most dramatic shift in the country, resulting in its rank dropping from 54th to ninth worst [for year-round particle pollution].' The report did not have any information on particle pollution in Ashtabula County. Atta said increased wildfires caused by global warming have made both kinds of pollution more common. 'The 2023 Canadian wildfires made an impact, as well as our own emissions,' she said. Particle pollution carries many of the same health risks as ozone gas, Atta said. Overall, the report found air pollution across the country has gotten significantly worse in the last year, with 46% of Americans living in areas the report graded F for air pollution. 'This is nearly 25 million more people breathing unhealthy air compared to last year's report, and more than in any other 'State of the Air' report in the last ten years,' the report said. Children, seniors, people with asthma, pregnant individuals, non-white people and people in poverty are particularly vulnerable to air pollution, according to the report. Atta said seniors exposed to air pollution are more likely to suffer heart attacks, strokes, heart disease and congestive heart failure. Children are vulnerable too, she said. 'The incidences of asthma increased when they're exposed to pollution,' she said. Many fossil fuel factories are often built in poorer non-white communities, leaving them more exposed to pollution, Atta said. Atta said Black people are twice as likely to develop issues from air pollution, and Hispanic people are three times as likely.
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Cleveland's air among ‘most polluted' in America: Study
CLEVELAND (WJW) — The American Lung Association has released its annual 'State of the Air' report and found that Cleveland is among the worst in the nation for year-round particle pollution, also known as 'soot.' Each year, for the past 26 years, the Lung Association has analyzed data from official air quality monitors to compile the report and track unhealthy levels of both ozone air pollution (smog) and particle pollution (soot.) The report then ranks the most polluted and cleanest U.S. cities based on an area's number of unhealthy air days. This year's report looked at a three-year period (2021-2023) and found Cleveland to be the 9th worst in the nation for year-round particle pollution. According to the report, Cleveland posted the 'most dramatic' shift in the country, resulting in its rank dropping from 54th to 9th worst. New fast food chain coming to NE Ohio 'Unfortunately, too many people in Cleveland are living with unhealthy levels of ozone and particle pollution. This air pollution is causing kids to have asthma attacks, making people who work outdoors sick and unable to work, and leading to low birth weight in babies. We urge Ohio policymakers to take action to improve our air quality,' said Kezia Ofosu Atta, Advocacy Director for the Lung Association in Ohio in a press release. According to the Lung Association, ozone and particle pollution are the most widespread pollutants and among the 'most dangerous.' The recent report found that nearly half of the U.S. population (46%) live in an area that received a failing grade for at least one measure of air pollution. Rare 'smiley face' to light up the sky this week 'The air pollutants covered in this report are widespread and can impact anyone's health. Both ozone and particle pollution can cause premature death and other serious health effects such as asthma attacks, heart attacks and strokes, preterm births and impaired cognitive functioning later in life. Particle pollution can also cause lung cancer,' said Atta, To learn more about the 'State of the Air' report, click here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
