Events
Our coverage of worldwide events
Kirchner splashes colour on Davos grey
Davos is not all about intense discussions on the world’s future mixed with deal-making and a bit of skiing. Even if there isn’t much glitz this year, anyone who tires of the non-stop geopolitics and economics will find respite in a land of blues, purples, greens and oranges at the nearby Kirchner Museum in the centre of town.
Belying its rather stark bunker-like architecture, the museum is awash with the colourful works of quasi-home town boy Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.
Kirchner was German but lived in and around this Swiss resort between 1917 and his death in 1938. The embodiment of German expressionism, he painted a wonderful if rather different picture of Davos and its surrounds than a less artistic visitor might see on an overcast January day.
The Nazis, however, didn’t take to his work and featured him heavily in their Entartete Kunst (degenerate art) exhibition, which lumped together work deemed at odds with National Socialist virtues. This, says museum creator Dr Karin Schick, worried Kirchner so much that, prompted also by pain from ill health, he killed himself.
Waking up from the dream
 By now, every Oscar watcher knows that the big surprise from Tuesday’s nominations was the fact that musical “Dreamgirls,” despite being the most nominated film for Oscars, failed to get a nod in the best movie category. Why?
From here at the Sundance Film Festival, in numerous conversations with movie writers and 
publicists, the answer seems to be too much Oscar hype.
Oscar fun: Trivia and facts on the nominations
Best Actress nominee Judi Dench (“Notes on a Scandal”) is the only returning performer from last year’s roster. She was up in 2005 for Best Actress for her portrayal of the title character in “Mrs. Henderson Presents.”
More trivia and facts about the week’s Oscar nominations:
 
  Meryl Streep garnered her 14th nomination,  for her performance in “The Devil Wears Prada.” This adds to her record roster of nominations, in both the Actress and Supporting Actress categories. She’s won once in each category (“Kramer vs. Kramer” for Supporting Actress, “Sophie’s Choice” for Actress). Jack Nicholson and Katharine Hepburn are her closests rivals, with 12 nominations each. Hepburn, whos is deceased, holds the record for most wins — four, all for Best Actress.Â
Life beyond Davos? Huffington in Second Life
This posting is not for the uncool. My colleague Adam Reuters, aka Adam Pasick, has just scored a first for Davos, interviewing one of the participants in the virtual world Second Life. Avatars (online alter egos) of Adam and his special guest, Arianna Huffington, sat in a specially constructed Davos newsroom in Second Life and chatted about things including, well, Second Life.
You could see the snow-capped peaks outside.
Adam is virtual bureau chief of the virtual Reuters bureau in the virtual world. Ms Huffington is the celebrated blogger and columnist whose The Huffington Post is a popular read for those following U.S. politics. She sat with Adam in the middle of the Davos conference centre while audio was fed into Second Life and their avatars chatted along with it in front of what anywhere else would be described as a live audience.
Avatars who missed it can get the interview in Second Life on video. Others might hear of it on the BBC or in a newspapers as real world, old style media also covered the interview. (Reuters will post the video here)
Watching the sands shift at Davos
One of the things Davosians love best when they meet up here in the mountains each year is the ability to hash out serious ideas about where the world is going. The World Economic Forum, after all, bills itself as “committed to improving the state of the world.”
This year is no exception and about 750 of the movers and shakers here have just decided that climate change is not only likely to have more impact than anything else on the world in the years ahead but that it is by a long shot the thing that everyone is least ready for.
Not much to glitter about
Someth
ing is missing from this year’s Davos meeting — glitz. After years of grabbing the limelight, the likes of Sharon Stone and Angelina Jolie are nowhere to be seen. Rock ‘n’ roll hasn’t died, of course: Bono is due in town on Friday to talk about Africa and Peter Gabriel is supposed to be around somewhere. But apart from that the glitterati is thin on the ground. Could it be that Davos is no longer hip?
Not so, says Klaus Schwab, the founder, executive chairman and all-round booster of the World Economic Forum whose goal is no less than shaping the global agenda. “We invited what you call ‘star’ people only the last years because they were relevant to a very specific topic,” he told celebrity-starved reporters. “This year we don’t feel in need of such a special accelerator, multiplier of the message.” Ouch!
Winter of discount tent
So off it goes. The World Economic Forum’s Davos 2007 meeting has begun with early discussions on the global economy — which is doing quite well, they say — and more esoteric chats about “The Legal Landscape around Climate Change” and “Exploring Identity and the Communication Disconnect”. For the hundreds of journalists gathered to cover the event
communication disconnect is always a major worry.
With apologies to Shakespeare, meanwhile, could this be the winter of our discount tent? The media find themselves in a tent rather than the concrete command post of yore. That bunker had a certain poignancy for reporters, at least for Reuters ones, because where they work at big events is nearly always called the bunker. At Davos, it really was one — underground and no windows.
A mysterious array of figures
With all these executives, journalists and politicians swirling around Davos, local shopkeepers are likely hoping for a nice boost in business. Their shops are chock-a-block with goodies. One, however, caught the eye with a rather strange collection of figurines. It is not often that you see Jesus and what appears to be Sigmund Freud on display together.
Even more mysterious is the small figure next to them. The nice lady behind the counter at Born To Board had no idea who he was, neither did her colleagues and they are not the only one’s stumped. Any ideas?
Davos – Risks to make the mighty meek
It’s a scary world and for anyone wanting to know just how scary, the answer is 23. Davos organisers WEF and business friends have identified this as the core number of threats out there and have offered up an analysis in a report called Global Risks 2007. Not exactly bedtime reading for those with nervous dispositions.
The report came out earlier this month, but with more than 2,400 of the world’s mighty gathering here for their annual chat, it is perhaps a good time to revisit some of the things that can swiftly make them meek. All the usual suspects are there — international terrorism, Middle East instability, earthquakes, storms, flooding and WMD proliferation. But others also get a look in. How about the tumbling dollar, or the arrival of risks associated with nanotechnology or the spread of “life style” diseases in the rich world? It’s nearly all getting worse, too, the report says.
Phew, there is snow in Davos
It snowed in Davos on Monday night, leaving the place slightly more than lightly dusted with the white stuff. This is just as well really because with the high and mighty arriving for their annual powerfest, a Swiss Alpine ski resort loses some of its raison d’etre if there isn’t any snow. Kind of like Rio without a beach. It may also head off what was likely to be a barrage of stories from the media scrum about global warming actually being on display.
Climate change is one of the main topics at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting with no less than 17 separate sessions dedicated to the issue. The organisers say this makes it one of their “greenest” meetings ever — presumably not a reference to the grassy fields and tree tops that could be seen on the way here. There are lots of heavy hitters due to discuss the issue, including U.S. presidential candidate John McCain and BP’s outgoing group chief executive Lord Browne.
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The Wall
