The New York Times: Ψηφοφορία στις ΗΠΑ για την δημοσιοποίηση των αρχείων Epstein – Η προσπάθεια της Ουκρανίας να αναβιώσει τις συνομιλίες με τη Ρωσία – Μια σημαντική εβδομάδα για την αγορά τέχνης – Μια πόλη καλυμμένη με μόλυβδο – Η Γερουσία των ΗΠΑ συμφώνησε να επισπεύσει το νομοσχέδιο για τον Epstein – Ο Τραμπ υπερασπίστηκε τον MBS για τη δολοφονία ενός δημοσιογράφου – Για πολλά ιταλικά νοικοκυριά, τα ζυμαρικά είναι βασικό είδος διατροφής. Αλλά στο Gragnano, κοντά στη Νάπολη, είναι κάτι περισσότερο: μια τέχνη που έχει ορίσει την πόλη εδώ και αιώνες – Τι πωλούν… στον κόσμο της τέχνης – Αν έχετε ταξιδέψει στα ελληνικά νησιά, πιθανότατα έχετε δοκιμάσει αυτό το ψάρι ψημένο με ντομάτες και κρεμμύδια

A town covered in lead

Lead dust is everywhere in Ogijo, a town north of Lagos — on kitchen floors, vegetable gardens, church grounds and schoolyards.

With every breath, local people absorb lead particles into their bloodstreams. The metal seeps into their brains, wreaking havoc on nervous systems. Toddlers ingest it by crawling across floors and then putting their hands in their mouths, in some cases leading to irreversible brain damage.

This public health catastrophe is the result of local factories that recycle car batteries, extracting the lead within to make new products. They do this in Nigeria thanks to a well-established, if unsavory, reality of the global economy: As tighter standards have limited lead pollution in wealthier nations, manufacturers have shifted their sights abroad. They rely increasingly on communities so desperate for jobs that their leaders have tacitly accepted lead poisoning as the cost of livelihood.

You can click here to read the details of our investigation, conducted in partnership with The Examination, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates global health. We commissioned blood tests for 70 Ogijo residents, which found harmful levels of lead in 7 out of 10 people. And we traced the lead recycled in Nigeria to a major battery manufacturer in the U.S. whose products are found under the hoods of millions of cars.

Source: Sustainable Research and Action for Environmental Development (SRADev Nigeria). Samuel Granados/The New York Times

What is happening in Nigeria is both shocking and familiar. Shocking because of the scale of the harm involved; familiar because similar dynamics are at work across thousands of other products.

As supply chains extend across oceans, the links have become so complex that retailers are sometimes unsure about the origins of their parts and raw materials. Even the best-intentioned companies struggle to figure out what they are buying, from whom and with what social and environmental consequences.

Same story, different industries

Over the last quarter-century, I have written multiple versions of this basic story.

While looking into illegal logging in Asia, I discovered that a major international retailer was unaware — or could at least plausibly deny — that it was using logs illegally cut in the Russian Far East.

I learned that a prominent American fashion brand either did not know — or preferred not to discuss — the brutal tactics used to crush a labor movement at a factory making its products in Guatemala.

And I found an enormous American retailer that employed a multinational auditing company to scrutinize factories all over the world, including in Vietnam, Turkey and Mexico, for child labor, yet paid almost no attention to the next link in the chain — the suppliers of its suppliers.

Battery recycling is an especially toxic industry to explore.

North American and European battery manufacturers have pioneered elaborate systems of recycling and marketed themselves as stewards of the environment. The auto industry cites its reuse of lead as a prime example of the circular economy.

Yet, in using imported lead, manufacturers rely on middlemen to provide assurances that the metal has been safely produced. These middlemen conduct inspections in which they flag problems and recommend the addition of pollution-limiting equipment, but they leave it to the factories to decide whether to follow through.

In essence, the industry has engineered a system in which everyone can plausibly blame someone else when trouble comes to light.

Our investigation revealed that some of the lead recycled in Nigeria was being purchased by East Penn Manufacturing, the second-largest automotive battery manufacturer in the U.S. When we confronted the company, the executive chairman told us that, until our inquiry, it had relied on its brokers’ assurances that everything was fine.

“Could that be me being too trusting?” he said. “I’ll take that shot.”

Carmen Abd Ali for The New York Times

The incentives to do things cheaply

We also spent time with a company in Nigeria called Green Recycling that took on the extra costs of doing it right, borrowing millions of dollars to install equipment that limits lead pollution.

But Green could not compete with other companies. It could not charge enough to cover its borrowing costs. It could not pay enough for spent batteries and was constantly outbid. And Green is now out of business.

And here is perhaps the most unsettling part of these supply chains. Because most of their parts are invisible to consumers — and even to other companies involved in production — the incentive to do things right is frequently trumped by a more powerful force: the rewards of doing things cheaply. Even when that comes at the cost of permanent lead poisoning in poor communities in West Africa.

Read the full article here.

The U.S. Senate agreed to fast-track the Epstein bill

The House of Representatives yesterday overwhelmingly approved a bill directing the Justice Department to make public all files related to its investigation into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Only one lawmaker voted “no.”

Hours later, the Senate agreed to pass the measure the moment that it arrived in the chamber and send it directly to President Trump’s desk. The president now says he will sign it, after trying for months to derail the bill. He reversed his position once it was clear that the measure would pass.

Trump defended MBS over a journalist’s murder

Trump praised Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia yesterday at the White House and brushed aside a reporter’s question about the death and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post journalist, in 2018. “Things happen,” Trump said.

The visit was a striking diplomatic turnabout for the crown prince, who had not been on U.S. soil since Khashoggi was killed by Saudi agents at the kingdom’s embassy in Istanbul. During the Biden administration, U.S. intelligence officials released a report determining that the crown prince had ordered the killing, but no direct action was taken against him.

Formula 1: Inside the plan to help the Las Vegas Grand Prix bounce back after a down year.

Tennis: Can padel really become a genuine rival?

Wife of Astronaut Pleads Guilty to Falsely Alleging Crime in Space

— A woman pleaded guilty last week to lying to law enforcement when she falsely accused her estranged wife, who is an astronaut, of illegally gaining access to her bank account from the International Space Station.

Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times

For many Italian households, pasta is a staple. But in Gragnano, near Naples, it’s something more: a craft that has defined the town for centuries. That’s where Garofalo, one of Italy’s largest pasta exporters, is based.

American kitchens are an important market for Garofalo, but that could end next year. The company and a dozen other Italian producers are facing tariffs of more than 100 percent on their exports to the U.S. Read more.

What they’re selling … in the art world

It’s a big week for the art market. After a rough patch that saw a decline in sales, art sellers insist that things are turning around.

Gustav Klimt’s lush portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, the daughter of his most important patron, yesterday became the second-most expensive painting to sell at auction, at $236.4 million. A gold toilet by Maurizio Cattelan (the sculptor whose duct-taped banana was a sensation last year) sold for $12.1 million. A surrealist painting by Frida Kahlo could go for $60 million on Thursday, which would be a public auction record for a work by a female artist.

The auction houses are predicting the week’s sales could generate $2.2 billion. Take a look at the six major artworks up for auction.

Read: The science fiction writer Chloe Gong recommends these cyberpunk novels with plenty of techno thrills.

Watch: Oliver Laxe’s “Sirat” is perhaps the year’s least describable and most terrifying film.

Wear: Is the suit making a comeback? Our critic has advice on suiting up.

If you have traveled in the Greek Islands, chances are you have had this fish baked with tomatoes and onions. The robust flavors in the tomato sauce work well with a variety of white fishes.