AC repair inValona, GA

SAVANNAH, Ga. — A few days before she drove into town to run the kitchen at the Grey, one of the most talked-about new restaurants in the country, Mashama Bailey treated herself to an eating tour of the South.

She had spent a chunk of her childhood in Savannah, between the ages of 5 and 11, but she remembered those years only in flashes. Her formative years had really been in New York City, and she thought a fast immersion in Southern cuisine would be inspiring, instructive and delicious.

So curving south from North Carolina to New Orleans, she tasted buttermilk and sorghum and Benton’s bacon, Nashville hot chicken and Cajun boudin, oyster po’ boys and red beans and rice. Then in Mississippi, at a Jackson landmark called the Mayflower Cafe, it all clicked: She ordered deviled crabs, whose accompanying sauce she recognized from childhood.

“I called my mom,” she said. “I was like, ‘Mom, this place has the dressing that you used to make for us when we were little!’ ”

The tangy-creamy memory source was Comeback Sauce, the Delta version of rémoulade. That sauce, and Ms. Bailey’s spin on deviled crabs, appeared as a special this month at the Grey, a restaurant with a symbolic power that is hard to ignore.

Here you find an African-American female chef working side-by-side with her white business partner in a much heralded restaurant built in a former bus station that used to have separate waiting areas and restrooms for black and white travelers.

“People walk in and they say, ‘I remember when this was segregated,’ ” Ms. Bailey said.

John O. Morisano, who goes by Johno, was raised on Staten Island and runs what he describes as an early stage investment firm. He moved to Savannah, patiently negotiated the purchase of a dilapidated and abandoned Greyhound bus station, spent a few million to bring back its powder-blue and stainless-steel gleam and recruited Ms. Bailey to be his business partner and executive chef. The history of the place is not lost on him. But he stressed that more elemental concerns are the first priority.

“It really comes back to food and wine, a place where people gather and come together over that,” he said. “The whole thing is about what Mashama’s cooking and her point of view on food. The comment I hear more than any? ‘I was born and raised in the South, and those are the best collard greens I’ve ever had.’ ”

Ms. Bailey, 41, was born in the Bronx and raised largely in Queens. For almost four years she was known as a calm and constant presence in the kitchen at Prune, Gabrielle Hamilton’s restaurant in the East Village.

Ms. Hamilton’s cooking there is like a succulent collision of tradition and autobiography: Prune reflects her own very personal viewpoint on French country fare. It helps to look at Ms. Bailey’s culinary approach at the Grey in a similar way. She is tapping into the traditions and ingredients of the South, yes, but she’s interpreting the concept of Southern cuisine through the filter of her own experience and training. She’s making what she likes to eat.

Her roast chicken arrives on a slab of sourdough toast that’s soaked with pan juices. The bird is crowned with a ladle of a sauce that echoes Country Captain, a Lowcountry-meets-the-subcontinent staple that has a touch of curry and stewed currants.

Ms. Bailey also serves a “country pasta,” which is like a Dixiefied carbonara with pork belly instead of pancetta, and a seafood boudin delicately stuffed with crayfish, wild shrimp and Carolina Gold rice. There is also a spicy roasted eggplant based on a West African peanut stew. She smokes her collard greens with the wood from pecan trees, then cooks them soft with leeks, onions and shallots — and not a smidgen of pork. (“It’s, like, vegan!” she said with a laugh.)

With a chef-driven internationally inflected menu like that, Ms. Bailey and Mr. Morisano know that they are bucking up against gastronomic preconceptions about the South, and about African-American cooking in particular.

“I think there are certain expectations,” Ms. Bailey said. “When black people come here, they expect a certain thing: They expect it to be soul food. And I don’t cook soul food. I cook food that’s soulful and that comes from me.”

Much of Savannah’s economy hinges on tourism, and it’s no secret that visitors mad for “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” make a beeline for Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room for fried chicken, candied yams and macaroni and cheese. (Ms. Bailey is no exception. “Let me tell you,” she said. “Mrs. Wilkes is pretty good.”) But Mr. Morisano, a newcomer to the restaurant business who has been studying the hospitality principles of Danny Meyer, is making a play for a different crowd: locals.

The challenge: Will locals respond?

“I told Mashama, ‘You’re an artist who happens to work in my favorite medium,’ ” said Philip Solomons, whose family has been prominent in Savannah society for five generations. “The question was, has Savannah become sophisticated enough to get what Johno and Mashama are doing?”

To answer that, Mr. Solomons glanced around the lively dining room on a Tuesday night and made note of how many of his friends had dropped by his table to say hello to him and his wife, Cathy.

“Half the fun of eating here is the number of times you get interrupted,” he said.

Ms. Bailey and Mr. Morisano, 48, were brought together by Ms. Hamilton. While dreaming up the Grey and driving back and forth between New York and Savannah, Mr. Morisano found himself in the car listening to Ms. Hamilton’s audiotaped version of her memoir, “Blood, Bones and Butter.” He began sending Ms. Hamilton letters and emails (“I don’t think I’ve ever stalked anybody the way I stalked Gabrielle,” he joked) until she agreed to sit down and talk with him about the crazy art of restaurateuring.

Ms. Hamilton let him know about Ms. Bailey. She remembered it as: “ ‘Well, duh. You should talk to Mashama.’ ” And she believed that Ms. Bailey deserved her own stage. “You could tell it was time,” Ms. Hamilton said. For Mr. Morisano, “the fact that Gabrielle told me she could cook was good enough for me,” he said. “Gabrielle told me she was the best fish cook she’d ever met.”

Cautious by nature, Ms. Bailey was wary, at first, about the risk of leaving New York and heading south.

“Me being me, my immediate reaction was, ‘No, I’m not going to go back there,’ ” she said. But Ms. Hamilton encouraged her, having pointed out, along the way, that there was a need for more African-American chefs to grab the national spotlight. So Ms. Bailey put on some “business casual” clothes and met Mr. Morisano (“this tall, kind of nerdy white guy,” she said) at the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park.

“He was like, ‘What do you think about food?’ ” Ms. Bailey said. “I said, ‘I love it. What do you think about food?’ We kind of built from there.”

The Grey opened in December, and Food & Wine magazine has already dubbed it one of the best new restaurants in the country. But for her part, Ms. Bailey admits that she’s still adjusting from working the line at Prune.

“I am just surprised at myself — super-surprised that I’ve been able to pull it off,” she said. “Whenever someone comes to me with a question, I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m the boss.’ ”

That’s only normal, Ms. Hamilton said.

“I think a lot of women, frankly, suffer that anyway, and she’s no different,” she said. “To be an authority figure in your own kitchen, I think we all struggle with that in the beginning. It’s part of becoming a real chef: a real chef and restaurant owner.”

Ms. Bailey is still learning about the South and the centuries-old etiquette of a place like Savannah, where not much gets done without an introduction from someone who is part of the fabric of the city. She has met Cynthia Hayes, the James Beard Award-winning force behind the Southeastern African American Farmers Organic Network. Through people like Ms. Hayes, she has met farmers and purveyors who now provide her with everything from local Harris Neck oysters to eggplants, honey and fresh-dug potatoes. She has learned it helps to point out that her mother’s family comes from Waynesboro, Ga., about 100 miles inland from Savannah.

On a recent Monday, she and Mr. Morisano took a drive out to McIntosh County to check in with one of their suppliers, Rafe Rivers, who grows organic vegetables and makes grits and cornmeal and sorghum syrup with his wife, Ansley West Rivers, on a spread called Canewater Farm.

Mr. Rivers said that the opening of the Grey felt like a boon to nearby farmers and food artisans.

“Everybody knew the Grey was coming,” he said. “The buzz was like, ‘They’re the hot thing on the street,’ and I thought, ‘I need to sell to these guys.’ ”

After awhile the Canewater crew was joined by Mitchell Smith, a friend from down the road who harvests and sells local seafood through his Valona Shrimp Company. A massive pot materialized. Cages full of blue crabs and stone crabs were hauled in dripping from the nearby marsh. Chilled bottles of riesling and pink sparkling Austrian pinot noir were popped open. Thunder drummed overhead.

Before long, Ms. Bailey found herself digging into a full-on Lowcountry boil, with crabs and shrimp and knobs of sausage and cobs of corn and knuckles of those fresh-dug potatoes piled up on a wooden table under the oaks.

If she had had any ambivalence about coming back to Savannah, the look on her face suggested that it had evaporated.

“At this particular moment?” she asked. “This is good.”

Environmental groups say they will step up their efforts to prevent the construction of a new international airport in a protected wetland area near Albania’s third-largest city, Vlora, after the government awarded the concession to build the airport to a tie-up between Mabetex Group and Turkey’s YDA.

Albania currently has only one international airport in operation, Mother Teresa International Airport in the capital Tirana. The government wants to open several new airports to help the development of the tourist sector.

After reconstruction, the long-idled airport at Kukes, just under 100 km from Tirana, is close to re-opening to serve budget airlines. Test flights were carried out at the airport on March 3 and its director Altin Progonati said the terminal is 80% completed, while other works are progressing at a fast pace.

Vlora is set to become the third international airport to open in the country and government officials have also mentioned the possibility of building a fourth and fifth airport at Saranda in the south of the country and Korca in the Morava mountains close to the Greek border. These will help bring visitors directly to tourist destinations, currently accessed via long bus journeys from Tirana airport, as services on Albania’s run-down railways operate sporadically and neither Saranda nor Korca are connected to the railway network.

“We have often talked about the need for other airports on [Albanian] territory, but it always seemed like a distant dream, which would take a long time to be realised, but … within the next four years we anticipate starting two more airports … thus concluding a strategy with five airports in the territory of Albania spread across the north, centre, south and east,” said Energy and Infrastructure Minister Belinda Balluku during a visit to Kukes airport on March 3.

However, the plans have run into controversy. As well as the opposition to the planned Vlora airport on environmental grounds, the government’s decision to extend the concession for Tirana airport sparked an angry reaction from the opposition and President Ilir Meta, who accused the ruling Socialist Party of rushing it through with insufficient scrutiny ahead of the April general election.

Earlier this year, a large group of Albanian and international NGOs appealed to the government to scrap plans to build the new airport in the Vjose-Narte Protected Landscape area, in an open letter to Prime Minister Edi Rama.

“While we appreciate initiatives from the Albanian government that aim at investments that give a huge contribution [to the] socio-economic development of our country, we are deeply concerned about the actual location of the project, as the construction of an airport there would irreversibly damage the ecosystem of ‘Vjose-Narte Protected Landscape’,” said the letter from the 36 NGOs.

“Such an investment would bring about uncontrolled and unsustainable development models that would irreversibly damage the natural values and resources of the area.”

The letter stressed that the Narta Lagoon and the surrounding ecosystem “represent one of the largest and most important wetland ecosystems of Albania and the Mediterranean”. More than 200 wild bird species have been recorded in the area, including eight that are critically endangered. The area is an important breeding site, and part of the Adriatic Flyway, where hundreds of thousands of birds forage and take shelter when migrating.

This poses a danger to humans too; the NGOs warn that some of the bird species seen in the area – among them pelicans, herons, gulls and flamingos – are big enough that “potential collision with airplanes could bring tragic consequences”. “Cases of airplane malfunctions or even crashes caused by the collision with wild birds are well documented. This fact strongly dictates that Vjosë-Narta is an inadequate location for this large public investment,” says the letter.

It goes on to argue that moving forward with the project in the current form “creates obstacles on the integration path of our country in the European Union, which has been the main aspiration of Albanians in the last 30 years”.

NGOs contacted by bne IntelliNews said they had not received an official response to the letter, though questioned by journalists on the issue Minister of Tourism and Environment Blendi Klosi dismissed the criticisms as a “fake debate”.

Meanwhile, the government has pressed ahead wth the project. After several failed tenders, it finally picked Lugano-based Mabco Constructions – set up by Kosovan businessman Behgjet Pacolli’s Mabetex Group with a 50% stake, Turkey’s YDA Group (48%) and 2A Group LLC (2%) – to build the airport under a 35-year concession. Work is expected to start this year and take three years to complete.

Representatives of two Albanian NGOs told bne IntelliNews that they would continue their campaign.

"The coalition of NGOs is determined. We will do everything possible in targeting this case,” said a spokesperson for Birds of Albania.

“This is the most serious threat to natural heritage in Albania since the post drainage times after the Second World War that [caused] some great wetlands in the country [to vanish]. The case is extremely dangerous as a precedent. If we allow such massive infrastructure to be built and consequently destroy a Protected Area, the same can be repeated in all [Protected Areas] in Albania and we risk [losing] more of them in the future, particularly the wetlands that are the rarest ecosystems in Albania composing less than 1.7% of the country’s territory.”

Outlining future plans, the Birds of Albania spokesperson said: “Now we are focused on seeking international support, considering that we were ignored by our country's authority. Based on the need, we will also raise the case on the court.”

Taulant Bino of the Albanian Ornithological Society said there were still hopes of influencing the plans to build the airport. The NGO is currently engaged in an advocacy campaign mostly through mass media and social platforms. Bino added that future actions could comprise "everything including judicial litigations”.

There have also been criticisms of the deal on economic grounds as more details have emerged. Mabco will invest €103.9mn to build the airport, NGO officials say the contract states that the project is considered high risk as it is being built from scratch and it is impossible to predict traffic. Therefore the Albanian government will assume a “revenue guarantee”, which means they will compensate the winning consortium if the airport fails. In total, should the airport fail or not meet expectations, Albanian taxpayers will end up paying €138mn to the consortium.

Bino also noted that there has not yet been a full environmental and social impact assessment, only a preliminary feasibility study.

Mabetex previously planned to build a huge tourist resort in the Divjaka-Karavasta National Park, another highly important area for birds; it includes the Karavasta lagoon that has been recognised as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention. The planned resort was met with fierce resistance from environmental groups and local officials, leading the government to withdraw from the project.

The campaign against the plans for Vlora airport come at the same time as a dispute between government and opposition over the extension of the concession for Mother Teresa International Airport.

Earlier in March, Meta vetoed the extension of the concession, but his veto was later overturned by the parliament, where the Socialists have a majority.

It was announced that the concession would be extended by 13 years two months after Albania’s Kastrati Group bought the airport’s operator in December. Kastrati proposed a package of investments worth around €100mn, with the money to be spent on expanding the airport's capacity by 6mn passengers per year, a runway extension, complete improvement of the airport infrastructure and significant improvement of service quality, the company said on January 28.

On rejecting the law, Meta said the legislation and the additional concession agreement “have the highest level of unconstitutionality and, unfortunately, of ‘legislative corruption’ in the government and the one-party assembly”.

“This phenomenon, i.e. ‘legislative corruption’, has become the new means of covering the 'clientelistic' benefits of funds and public property, where for every benefit donated, they adopt a law to legislate it,” Meta said in a statement posted on the presidential website.

He argued that the law had been rushed through the parliament. “The reason is very simple, hiding from the public eye this procedure is completely unconstitutional, scandalous and illegal,” he claimed.

The upcoming election will pit Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Socialists – which are leading in the polls – against the two main opposition parties, the Democratic Party and the Socialist Movement for Integration (LSI), the latter led by Meta’s wife Monika Kryemadhi after he resigned from the party on becoming president.

A medida que la población mundial se vacuna y aprende a convivir con el coronavirus, los eventos deportivos vuelven a celebrarse con algo parecido a la normalidad. Si todo va según lo previsto, 2022 vendrá cargado de competiciones. Además de las que se celebran cada año, como ligas de fútbol, baloncesto, hockey, balonmano, torneos de tenis y pruebas de atletismo o ciclismo, en esta ocasión se celebrarán dos citas muy importantes: los Juegos Olímpicos de Invierno, que tendrán lugar en Pekín del 4 al 20 de febrero; y el Mundial de Qatar, que se disputará entre el 21 de noviembre y el 18 de diciembre.

A ello hay que sumar la Eurocopa femenina, que se celebrará del 6 al 31 de julio en Inglaterra; los Mundiales de Atletismo en pista cubierta (en Belgrado, Serbia, del 18 al 20 de marzo) y al aire libre (en Oregón, EEUU, del 15 al 24 de julio); así como el de Ciclismo en Ruta (en Wollongong, Australia, del 28 al 25 de septiembre). Antes vendrán el Giro de Italia (del 6 al 29 de mayo), el Tour de Francia (del 1 al 24 de julio) y la Vuelta a España (del 19 de agosto al 11 de septiembre).

También se han publicado ya los calendarios provisionales de Fórmula 1 y MotoGP, que contemplan 23 y 21 grandes premios, respectivamente, salvo cambios de última hora. En cuanto al tenis, habrá eliminatorias de la Copa Davis en febrero, mientras que los cuatro Grand Slam están programados en en el orden habitual: el Open de Australia será el primero (del 17 al 30 de enero); seguido de Roland Garros (del 22 de mayo al 5 de junio); Wimbledon (del 27 de junio al 9 de julio) y el US Open (del 29 de agosto al 11 de septiembre).

El calendario deportivo de 2022 es mucho más amplio. Además de las competiciones ya mencionadas, tendrán lugar las siguientes:

Enero

Febrero

Marzo

Abril

Mayo

Junio

Julio

Agosto

Septiembre

Octubre

Noviembre

Diciembre

Bruselas, 10 oct (EFE).- Unas 25.000 personas se manifestaron este domingo en Bruselas para pedir más esfuerzos en la lucha contra el cambio climático, una movilización que se produce tras las dramáticas inundaciones de este verano en el país y en vísperas de la COP-26 de Glasgow.

La marcha, que comenzó a las 14.00 horas, fue convocada por la "Coalición Clima", que agrupa a unas 80 entidades entre ONG, sindicatos, organizaciones juveniles y movimientos ciudadanos, y no había salido a la calle en masa en el último año y medio debido a la pandemia de covid-19.

"Esperamos medidas más ambiciosas, solidarias y coherentes", ha dicho Nicolas Van Nuffel, presidente de la colación que reclama una acción política más contundente para frenar el calentamiento global cuando falta menos de un mes para la COP-26.

La cita reunirá en Glasgow a decenas de países con el fin de avanzar hacia dos objetivos principales: mantener el aumento de la temperatura global por debajo de 1,5 grados centígrados y lograr para 2050 la neutralidad climática -realizar solo las emisiones contaminantes que sean capaces de absorber-, metas que al ritmo actual de emisiones no se alcanzarán, según los expertos.

En la marcha tienen una participación destacada las víctimas de las inundaciones de este verano, que causaron más de 40 fallecidos y enormes daños materiales debido a unas lluvias torrenciales que triplicaron el volumen normal y que estudios científicos vinculan con el cambio climático.

"Yo soy una refugiada climática", le ha dicho al diario Le Soir Bernadette Leemans, vecina de la ciudad valona de Chaudfontaine, en el sur del país, que tuvo que mudarse tras las inundaciones y considera que las acciones actuales para frenar el cambio climático "son irrisorias".

"Yo tuve suerte. Fui acogida con brazos abiertos, pusieron comida ante mi puerta, no tuve que cruzar el Mediterráneo en una barca hinchable ni los Alpes a pie. No me recibieron a punta de fusil, fui ayudada por voluntarios que hablaban mi lengua", ha añadido para contraponer su situación a la de otros afectados por el cambio climático en el mundo.

Mostrar más

El Gobierno belga prevé presentar antes de finales de mes su plan para lograr el objetivo de reducir las emisiones contaminantes en un 55 % con respecto a los niveles de 1990 para el año 2030, meta compartida por el conjunto de la Unión Europea.

Dentro de las medidas que contemplan está reforzar la producción de energía eólica en el mar del Norte, adaptar el sistema de transporte de la energía, cambiar la tributación de los coches de empresa para favorecer la electrificación y apostar por combustibles no fósiles como el hidrógeno o los biocombustibles. EFE

lpc/vh

© EFE 2021. Está expresamente prohibida la redistribución y la redifusión de todo o parte de los contenidos de los servicios de Efe, sin previo y expreso consentimiento de la Agencia EFE S.A.

Na koprskem okrožnem sodiš?u bi se moralo danes nadaljevati sojenje Valonu Hoxhaju in Eltonu Shkurtiju, ki jima tožilstvo o?ita izsiljevanje izolskega gostinca v letu 2016, a se bo moralo sojenje o?itno še v tretje za?eti znova, saj se jima bo na zatožni klopi o?itno pridružil še Florim Hoxha, ki je bil še do pred kratkim nedosegljiv za slovensko roko pravice.

KOPER > Na sodiš?u so vzpostavili video povezavo z zaporom na Dobu, kjer Valon Hoxhaj in Elton Shqurti prestajata zaporno kazen v zadevi Kobra, a se obravnava ni premaknila naprej. Pred ?asom so kosovski organi Sloveniji izro?ili Florima Hoxho, ki naj bi sodeloval pri izsiljevanju izolskega gostinca. Valon Hoxhaj je pripomnil, da se je Hoxha sam predal, kar je pomembno za postopek na sodiš?u.

Državna tožilka Janja Hvala je pojasnila, da so Hoxho v okviru preiskovalnega postopka v petek že zaslišali. Odvetnik Rajko Trunkl, ki ga je sodiš?e po uradni dolžnosti postavilo Florimu Hoxhi, nam je pojasnil, da je sodiš?u predlagal, da njegovi stranki odpravi pripor, v katerem je bil od izro?itve, in ga nadomesti z milejšim ukrepom, obveznim javljanjem na policijski postaji v Izoli. S takšnim predlogom se je strinjala tudi državna tožilka. Odvetnik je še pojasnil, da je sodiš?e Hoxhi pripor že odpravilo.

Shipron Hoxhaj ostaja na Kosovu

Koprsko tožilstvo je obtožbo zaradi izsiljevanja izolskega gostinca vložilo tudi proti Shipronu Hoxhaju, vendar je oktobra 2016, med zaklju?no akcijo v zadevi Kobra, pobegnil in od takrat ni bil dosegljiv slovenskemu pravosodju. Sodiš?e je za njim razpisalo mednarodno tiralico in evropski nalog za prijetje in predajo, maja so ga prijeli na Kosovu, kjer naj bi bil verjetno že vse od pobega. Na eni od prejšnjih obravnav je njegov brat Valon povedal, da ne bo dal soglasja za izro?itev. Pred dnevi so nam to potrdili tudi na koprskem sodiš?u. “Od Shqiprona Hoxhaja smo dobili obvestilo, da ne soglaša s predajo naši držav,” nam je odgovorila predsednica sodiš?a Samanta Nusdorfer. Dodala je, da bodo morali glede na na?ela mednarodnega prava na Kosovu prevzeti pregon proti Hoxhaju oziroma mu tam soditi.

Tožilka pa je na obravnavi še pojasnila, da se bo preiskava proti Florimu Hoxhi verjetno kmalu kon?ala. Ko bo vložila obtožbo še proti Hoxhi, bo predlagala, da postopka združijo, saj gre za iste dokaze, kaznivo dejanje pa naj bi storili v sostorilstvu. Zato danes z obravnavo niso nadaljevali, sojenje se bo tako sredi novembra za?elo znova, s tremi obtoženimi na zatožni klopi.

Po obtožbi naj bi Valon Hoxhaj, Elton Shkurti - skupaj s Shipronom Hoxhajem, Valonovim mlajšim bratom, in Florimom Hoxho - pred dobrimi petimi leti od izolskega gostinca D. K. (ki je kasneje dobil status zaš?itene pri?e) terjali namišljen dolg. 30.000 do 50.000 evrov naj bi jim moral pla?ati za to, da bi imel mir pred njimi. Obtožena naj bi mu grozila tudi s smrtjo, mu napovedala, da si bo moral skopati grob ... Zadrževali naj bi ga v baraki v starem Jagodju, a mu je uspelo zbežati. Ker jim denarja ni izro?il, je kaznivo dejanje izsiljevanja ostalo pri poskusu.

Na prvem sojenju so Valona Hoxhaja in Eltona Shkurtija oprostili, vendar je tožilstvo uspelo s pritožbo. Ponovno sojenje se je za?elo že lani, konec junija pa se je moralo za?eti znova zaradi zamenjave sodnika porotnika.