Daily news sites

The story of Manon Lescaut is the classic saga of a young woman torn between love and money. It has inspired several operas and the Met returned its production of Massenet's lovely and popular Manon to the stage last night with a sterling cast led by Diana Damrau in the title role and Vittorio Grigolo as her one true love, Chevalier des Grieux.

Damrau, known mostly for her coloratura and Mozart roles, sails through the soaring dramatic passages of Massenet's luscious score. But it is the delicacy and sheer beauty of her heartbreaking pianissimo lines, especially in her Act 2 "Adieu, notre petite table," that evokes real sympathy for a character with undeniable gold-digger tendencies.

Grigolo, the dashing Italian tenor who scored a big success at the Met in the title role of "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" earlier this year, sings with passionate intensity throughout, his rich voice full of fervor, and his second-act Dream aria ("En fermant les yeux") a show-stopping moment.

In fact, Damrau and Grigolo make a fine pair of lovers, with some real chemistry that comes through in their several duets. Manon's third-act seduction of des Grieux as he is about to take religious vows (and delivering a zealous "Ah! Fuyez, douce image") is sultry, and their final death scene is a tender reprise of their ill-fated love affair.

Manon is Massenet's most popular opera and it is the most frequently performed operatic version of Abbe Prevost's novel, though Puccini's Manon Lescaut, which will have a new production next season at the Met, runs a close second.

The opera opens at an inn in town of Amiens where Lescaut is waiting for his 15-year-old cousin Manon to arrive by coach on her way from the small village of her birth to a convent. When she does, she is full of wonder at all the sights she has seen and recounts them in the lovely "Je suis encore tout etourdie" aria, liltingly and enchantingly sung by Damrau.

The bright lights of Amiens are alluring, and Manon, dressed in a country skirt, blouse, and jacket and wearing a straw hat, is captivated by the fine gowns the ladies at the inn are wearing. It's a variation of the age-old question: how are you going to keep 'em in the convent once they've seen Amiens?

But Manon is destined for brighter lights than Amiens. She rebuffs a rich old roue named Guillot who tries to hit on her at the inn, but when the handsome young des Grieux shows up on his way home to his father's estate, it's love at first sight and she runs away to Paris with him.

When next we see Manon, she and des Grieux are living in a garret, money running out, and des Grieux talking marriage. Opportunity knocks for Manon when de Bretigny, another rich man from the Amiens inn, proposes she come live with him. The prospect of a life of luxury and ease are too much and she leaves des Grieux, who is about to be kidnapped anyway by agents of his father, the Count.

But riches and all of Paris at her feet do not prevent Manon from feeling pangs of jealousy when she learns des Grieux is about to take monastic vows. She tracks him down at the church of St. Suplice and convinces him to run away with her one more time.

Once again, money begins to run low and Manon persuades des Grieux to go with her to a gambling club and risk all they've got left in a card game with Guillot. Des Grieux wins but Guillot accuses them both of cheating. Des Grieux's father gets him out but Manon ends up in jail and is about to be deported. Des Grieux tries to arrange her escape, but she has become ill in prison and dies in his arms on the road to Le Havre.

While these Manon performances are musically captivating -- Emmanuel Villaume leads a robust reading of the score from the magnificent Met Orchestra and fine all-round cast, especially Dwayne Croft's de Bretigny, join Damrau and Grigolo -- the 2012 Met production by Laurent Pelly is not without problems.

The time has been moved forward 100 years from the original late 18th century, though apart from the costumes you might not recognize the settings as Belle Epoque. The opening act is a doll-house configuration of Amiens, and the second act Parisian garret looks more like a cold-water walkup on the Lower East Side and is pushed so far upstage that the audience seems to be viewing the action from across the street. Even the final act's highway to Le Havre more resembles a mean street in some deserted big-city ghetto.

Some of the stage directions are so broadly histrionic they are almost risible. In the fourth-act Hotel de Transylvanie, which looks more like an underground speakeasy than a fashionable gambling club, Manon falls to the floor and begins scooping up banknotes, greedily clutching them to her breast, when the gendarmes arrive.

But the main attraction is still Massenet's wonderfully Romantic score and the Met has provided two bravura lovers in Damrau and Grigolo and a strong roster of singers to go with them to overcome any inconsistencies of the staging.

Women's empowerment starts with how women treat other women.

Created by SheKnows Media and BlogHer, a new video features a few of the women from this year's BlogHer15 conference advisory board discussing the importance of women supporting one another in a collective effort to educate and empower female readers and content consumers.

BlogHer15 is an annual conference created in partnership with BlogHer and SheKnows Media that celebrates female content creators. This year's expert advisory board, which attends and speaks at the conference, is made up of 37 people who are making an impact in the media world.

Four of these 37 members are featured in the video, including the founder of Digital Undivided Kathryn Finney, the founder of Femsplain Amber Gordon, managing partner of Greenroom Communications Kim Holderness and the founder and CEO of Pipeline Fellowship Natalia Oberti Noguera.

"We are our own biggest advocate, and if we can break that stereotypical girl versus girl mentality there's so much that we can do," Gordon says in the video.

Finney explains the impact that empowered women can have in media. "We have all of these platforms that are available to us, where there's no longer the gatekeepers that tell us what we can write, when we can write, how we can write -- we can do it any way we want to," she says.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in Japan on Monday for a two-day visit during which she met with Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe and Emperor Akihito. One of the first stops in Merkel's schedule, however, was the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, where she was greeted by a small, dancing robot named ASIMO.

Merkel is just the latest in a long list of heads of state to grasp the cold, emotionless hand of Honda's Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility, or ASIMO. In what has become something of a strange ritual, ASIMO has emerged as a fixture of photo-ops with world leaders and dignitaries on visits to Japan. Honda's creation, which the company touts as "the world's most advanced humanoid robot," has also been flown out to events across the globe where it has pressed the flesh of even more of the world's most powerful people.

The brief history of these robot-human meetings below suggest, however, that a universal etiquette for how to greet ASIMO may still be lacking.

ASIMO confronts German Chancellor Merkel


German Chancellor Angela Merkel (R) watches a performance by ASIMO (L) in Tokyo on March 9, 2015. ( YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP/Getty Images)

Who seemingly attempts to make peace

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (R) watches a performance by ASIMO in Tokyo on March 9, 2015. (YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP/Getty Images)

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto watches ASIMO do its thing

Mexico's President Enrique Pena, left, in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, Friday, Feb. 21, 2014. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Prince Charles and ASIMO get into a weird standoff

Britain's Prince Charles looks at Honda's humanoid robot ASIMO in Tokyo Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2008. (AP Photo/Koichi Kamoshida, Pool)

ASIMO confuses Former Swedish PM Goran Persson

Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, left, in Tokyo, March 8, 2004. (AP Photo/Chiaki Tsukumo)

ASIMO greets Queen Margarethe II of Denmark with flowers

Queen Margarethe of Denmark, right, is welcomed by Honda robot ASIMO in Tokyo, Nov. 17, 2004. (AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye)

Turkey's President Erdogan poses with ASIMO

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan shakes hands with ASIMO in Istanbul, Turkey, Saturday, Nov. 20, 2004. (AP Photo/Murad Sezer)

Former President of Chile Sebastian Pinera observes ASIMO's soccer skills

Visiting Chilean President Sebastian Pinera (R) and his wife Cecilia Morel (2nd R) enjoy a demonstration of Honda's humanoid robot in Tokyo on March 29, 2012. (YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP/Getty Images)

President Obama bows to ASIMO

President Barack Obama and ASIMO bow to each other in Tokyo, Thursday, April 24, 2014. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

ASIMO is the child former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder always wanted

German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder stands beside Honda robot ASIMO in northern Germany, on Sunday, April 18, 2004. (AP Photo/Christof Stache)

Honda did not immediately return requests for information on how ASIMO manages to meet these elites, nor on any grand plans that the robot might have for the future.

FRANKFURT -- Germany has weathered the financial crisis much better than most of its neighbors. Regarded as the sick man of Europe as recently as 1999, today the country boasts the continent's strongest economy, accounting for roughly a quarter of its exports. Its unemployment rate, at just below 5 percent, is half the European average. The federal budget is balanced for the first time in a decade.

But it would be a mistake to assume that Germany's economic performance vindicates its policymaking. In fact, Germany's current economic dominance has been built on a policy framework that stands in direct opposition to that championed by former Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, the father of its post-World War II "economic miracle."

In lieu of Erhard's so-called ordoliberalism -- in which the state lays the groundwork for a functioning market economy by actively managing the legal environment -- the economic strategy pursued by Chancellor Angela Merkel's government has been haphazard, driven more by political expediency than by any underlying philosophy. Germany would be wise not to take its economic success for granted. In a time of increasing economic and political uncertainty, Erhard's guiding principles are more important than ever.

Indeed, Germany's policymakers seem to be stumbling from decision to decision. Instead of steering the economy, they are being driven by it, reacting with no clear sense of direction to the demands of the moment. The country's celebrated de-carbonization is putting its industry at risk. Collective bargaining, once left to economic actors, is becoming increasingly politicized. Changes in pension policy are boosting public spending and contributing to rising levels of debt.

At the heart of Germany's troubles is the stubborn -- and internationally widespread -- idea that the economy is a large, clock-like mechanism into which the state can intervene without consequences. The increasing mathematization of economics in recent decades has abetted this development.

The central weakness of democratic systems also contributes to the problem: The quest for votes favors the extension of social benefits and discourages unpopular measures that would put the economy on a more sustainable footing. As the German economist Herbert Giersch once put it, what is politically expedient is rarely economically beneficial.

It is for this reason that a return to ordoliberalism is more important than ever. Erhard's objective was to counter political pragmatism and activism with an orderly vision of economic and social policy. The need to take a holistic view of the economy was self-evident. For today's social engineers and economists, this is no longer the case.

Erhard's vision of a social market economy was a third way, an alternative to both large-scale state intervention and the risks of laissez-faire liberalism. Germany's historical experience had demonstrated that freedom without order led to chaos, and order without freedom resulted in coercion and the renunciation of democracy.

Unguided capitalism undermined itself, according to Erhard, as monopolists cornered markets and captured the state. But the attempt to perfect life through increasingly comprehensive state intervention, until even the smallest injustices were compensated, was also bound to fail. Human society simply does not follow the rules of a termite colony; order must accommodate freedom and individuality.

The continuing relevance of Erhard's ideas can be seen in the growing number of protest movements -- strengthened by social networks -- challenging the market economy and neoliberalism. Any increase in the market's perceived legitimacy brought about by the failure of communism was temporary at best. Market-oriented policies today are seen as cold and anti-social, especially in Western industrialized countries. The paternalistic welfare state is viewed as more humane, despite the loss of freedom and the financial distortions associated with it.

Erhard was well aware of the tension between economic freedom and the democratic state. He and his followers never envisaged ordoliberalism as an unchangeable dogma, but rather as a model that could be adapted to new challenges. Erhard even attempted to adjust it to the sociopolitical changes of the 1960s, developing the concept of a "formed society," whereby factionalism would be minimized and the state governed by consensus.

Erhard failed to gain support for this controversial idea. But, given rising inequality and growing disenchantment with politics and political parties, it addresses questions that remain relevant for representative democracy today.

As Erhard himself would have argued, ordoliberalism is not a one-size-fits-all solution. But there can be no question that in today's globalized world, the economy -- and perhaps politics as well -- would benefit from the imposition of order.

No political system capable of overcoming hardship and misery can be built without first realizing improvements in the economy's potential. That must be achieved by minimizing state intervention, bureaucracy and privileges for the chosen few. Erhard's guiding principle was simple: there must be guiding principles. It is an idea that remains as important as ever -- in Germany and beyond.

To make way for new construction near the city's Liverpool Street rail station, archaeologists have started excavating an estimated 3,000 historic skeletons now interred there on the site of the Bedlam burial ground.

The burial ground was in use from 1569 through at least 1738 and is considered the most archaeologically valuable site in London, according to Museum of London Archaeology, which is overseeing the project.

"This excavation presents a unique opportunity to understand the lives and deaths of 16th and 17th century Londoners," Jay Carver, one of the archaeologists involved in the dig, said in a written statement. "The Bedlam burial ground spans a fascinating phase of London's history, including the transition from the Tudor-period City into cosmopolitan early-modern London."

The old bones may shed new light on the diet and lifestyle of the people who once lived in the area.

"It's a kind of act of remembrance in a way, that their mortal remains are giving us information", Niamh Carty, a specialist in the analysis of bones and one of the archaeologists involved in the excavation, told the BBC. She said the age, sex, and stature of the people buried there would be investigated.

The bones of plague victims buried at the site may yield fresh insights into the evolution of the bacteria that cause plague, according to the statement.

England's last great outbreak of bubonic plague occurred in 1665. It killed an estimated 100,000 people, or almost one in four Londoners.

Plans call for a team of 60 archaeologists to work six days a week. The excavation is expected to continue for the next four weeks.

The skeletons will be reburied at a cemetery near London, Discovery reported.

WASHINGTON -- Hillary Clinton on Tuesday addressed the growing controversy over a letter that Senate Republicans wrote to Iranian leaders, which critics are calling a partisan move to scuttle White House negotiations with a foreign government.

"A recent letter from Republican senators was out of step with the best traditions of American leadership, and one has to ask, what was the purpose of this letter?" Clinton said at a press conference at the U.N. in New York.

"Either these senators were trying to be helpful to the Iranians or harmful to commander-in-chief in middle of high stakes international diplomacy," the likely 2016 presidential candidate added, arguing that the move discredited the letter's signatories.

The letter, signed by forty-seven Republican senators, sparked a firestorm earlier this week by suggesting that any deal reached with the Obama administration over Iran's nuclear program would not be constitutionally binding, since a future president or Congress could take steps to revoke the agreement. Democrats have condemned the move as an attempt to subvert President Barack Obama's powers on the world stage, with Vice President Joe Biden even calling the letter "beneath the dignity of an institution I revere."

Clinton addressed matter in a press conference following a speech at U.N. on women's empowerment. The majority of the conference was dominated by questions about her use of email while she served as secretary of state.

WASHINGTON -- On Tuesday, likely Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton spoke at a United Nations conference on women. But if you were watching cable TV's coverage of the speech, you wouldn't know what exactly she said.

That's because the big three cable news channels focused on the controversy over Clinton's decision to use a private email account to conduct government business while serving as secretary of state. She was scheduled to address the issue at a press conference following her speech, so pundits took the opportunity to rehash the controversy during her speech.

For the most part, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC showed images of Clinton speaking coupled with audio of people talking about the emails. (MSNBC and Fox News very briefly showed video and sound from the address.) Here's a glimpse at 2:09 p.m., when Clinton's speech was still going on:






While questions about Clinton's secretive use of email are relevant to American voters, so are women's rights. As U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday, "Women continue to suffer disproportionately from the economic crisis, from the impacts of climate change, from the displacement caused by conflict, persecution and so much else."