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LA STAMPA
Italy

Benetton's Lip-Locked Pope Photo Pulled After Vatican Outcry

Italian retailer Benetton is again pushing the boundaries of advertising with a provocative campaign. The ads portray global figures, including President Obama, shown kissing their nemeses. But the prickliest of the pics has the Pope smooching an Egyptian

Benetton's controversial Pope-Imam image
Benetton's controversial Pope-Imam image
LA STAMPAItalySourcesSocietyLA STAMPACountries


*NEWSBITES

ROME -- A digitally altered ad that portrays Pope Benedict XVI locking lips with Ahmed Mohamed el-Tayeb, Imam of Cairo's Al-Azhar mosque, has outraged Catholics worldwide. After a stern rebuke from the Vatican, Italian clothing company Benetton pulled its ad Thursday, a day after it first went public in Paris.

Benetton campaigns have been controversial before. In the 1980s and 1990s, photographer Oliviero Toscani orchestrated campaigns showing, among other images, a man dying from AIDS and a kiss between a nun and a priest. Recently, the company's new marketer, Erik Ravelo, came up with the idea of reviving its past provocative approach. On Wednesday, Benetton announced the launch of its new campaign, which revolves around the them "Unhate," an invented term meaning "without hate." The ads are inspired by a Cold War satirical mural portraying Erich Honecker, the then-head of East Germany, passionately kissing Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

According to Benetton's executive deputy chairman, Alessandro Benetton, the aim of the campaign is to "fight hate." The digitally altered ads portray kisses between several odd couples, including U.S. President Barack Obama, shown kissing Chinese president Hu Jintao; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas; and German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

But of all the pairings, the one generating the biggest buzz is the controversial Pope-Imam image, which Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi described as showing "a serious lack of respect for the Pope."

In the end, the Italian company decided to pull the ads. "We want to point out again that the meaning of the campaign is just to fight the culture of hate, in every shape," said Alessandro Benetton. "On the other hand, we are sorry if the use of an image of the Pope and the Imam offended faithful. For this reason, we have decided to pull the ads immediately," Benetton concluded.

Read the full story in Italian by Alberto Mattioli

Photo – Benetton

*Newsbites are digest items, not direct translations

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LA STAMPA
La Stampa ("The Press") is a top Italian daily founded in 1867 under the name Gazzetta Piemontese. Based in Turin, La Stampa is owned by the Fiat Group and distributed in many other European countries.
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Green
nature

Forest Networks? Revisiting The Science Of Trees And Funghi "Reaching Out"

A compelling story about how forest fungal networks communicate has garnered much public interest. Is any of it true?

Thomas Brail films the roots of a cut tree with his smartphone.

Arborist and conservationist Thomas Brail at a clearcutting near his hometown of Mazamet in the Tarn, France.

Alain Pitton / ZUMA
GreenSourcesUNDARK
Melanie Jones, Jason Hoeksema, & Justine Karst

Over the past few years, a fascinating narrative about forests and fungi has captured the public imagination. It holds that the roots of neighboring trees can be connected by fungal filaments, forming massive underground networks that can span entire forests — a so-called wood-wide web. Through this web, the story goes, trees share carbon, water, and other nutrients, and even send chemical warnings of dangers such as insect attacks. The narrative — recounted in books, podcasts, TV series, documentaries, and news articles — has prompted some experts to rethink not only forest management but the relationships between self-interest and altruism in human society.

But is any of it true?

The three of us have studied forest fungi for our whole careers, and even we were surprised by some of the more extraordinary claims surfacing in the media about the wood-wide web. Thinking we had missed something, we thoroughly reviewed 26 field studies, including several of our own, that looked at the role fungal networks play in resource transfer in forests. What we found shows how easily confirmation bias, unchecked claims, and credulous news reporting can, over time, distort research findings beyond recognition. It should serve as a cautionary tale for scientists and journalists alike.

First, let’s be clear: Fungi do grow inside and on tree roots, forming a symbiosis called a mycorrhiza, or fungus-root. Mycorrhizae are essential for the normal growth of trees. Among other things, the fungi can take up from the soil, and transfer to the tree, nutrients that roots could not otherwise access. In return, fungi receive from the roots sugars they need to grow.

As fungal filaments spread out through forest soil, they will often, at least temporarily, physically connect the roots of two neighboring trees. The resulting system of interconnected tree roots is called a common mycorrhizal network, or CMN.

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