The Times - UK (2022-06-13)

34 Monday June 13 2022 | the times

Wo r l d

Talk of an impending recession does

not appear to have curbed the

enthusiasm of Wall Street’s bankers,

who are spending record bonuses on

luxury cars and partying.

Financial services workers received

extra payouts averaging $257,500 last

year, up 20 per cent from the previous

12 months, according to official

figures. Wall Street enjoyed a bumper

2021 but the future is much more

uncertain, with rising inflation bring-

ing fears of recession.

Bankers appear to be paying little

notice to gloomy forecasts and are

splashing the cash on cars and caviar,

Fast cars and caviar for Wall Street’s elite

according to the New York Post. Jesse

Schenker, who owns restaurants in

Oyster Bay, Long Island, said:

“Bankers are just doing well, and

they’re kind of going nuts.” He said

one group dined on $1,000 bottles of

wine and $200 truffles.

Faisal Malik, a luxury car broker

and founder of the Status Auto

Group, based in New York, said the

bonuses were spent on cars such as

the Mercedes G63s, which starts at

about $155,000.

“I’ve probably sold a good 40

G63s,” he said. “I’m currently work-

ing on a deal for a McLaren P1 GTR,

which is a ‘one of one’ in chrome red

for around the $2.5 million mark.”

The generous spending may be a

result of people spending so long

locked inside during the pandemic,

the owner of a nightclub said.

Philip Zelonky, the founder of

Chelsea’s Noir NY club, said: “There’s

a combination of people being stuck

at home for so long [due to] Covid and

wanting to go out for maybe their first

time in a while, and flexing and really

kind of living large.”

The roughly 180,000 employees in

the financial services industry make

up about 5 per cent of New York City’s

private sector employment but

account for a fifth of its wages.

Experts predict that America could

tip into recession soon. Jamie Dimon,

the head of JP Morgan Chase,

warned of an economic “hurricane”.

United States

Keiran Southern

Archaeologists have mapped out an

ancient city that came to light after

thousands of years when part of the

Mosul dam reservoir was drained.

Large buildings emerged with well-

preserved walls and hundreds of

artefacts. The site is expected to be

the city of Zakhiku, centre of the

Mitanni empire. Walls and towers, a

multistorey storage building and

cuneiform tablets wrapped in clay

envelopes were discovered in the city

that was built 3,400 years ago.

Ivana Puljiz, assistant professor of

archaeology at Freiburg University,

which organised funding for the

excavation, said the huge building

was of particular importance because

enormous quantities of goods must

have been stored in it, “probably

brought from all over the region”.

Walls ten feet high from thousands

of years ago were found to be still

standing despite being made of sun-

dried mud and having been sub-

merged in the waters of the Tigris

river. The Smithsonian Institution

said the walls had withstood the years

possibly because an earthquake had

turned their upper parts into rubble,

which served as a protective cover

over the centuries.

Peter Pfälzner, an archaeology pro-

fessor at Tübingen University, said the

survival of ceramic vessels containing

more than 100 cuneiform tablets was

“close to a miracle”.

As the water receded a team of

researchers and archaeologists was

quickly set up to excavate the histori-

cal treasure before the reservoir

Ancient city emerges as

Mosul’s dam is drained

levels rose again. Local people had

been aware of the ancient city since

the 1980s.

The Smithsonian said a drought in

2018 exposed parts of the ancient city.

Excavators discovered a palace with

22ft-high walls and “remains of wall

paintings in vibrant shades of red and

blue”.

Archaeologists in the latest mis-

sion learnt more about the historical

empire that lasted from about 1500 to

1350BC. It was founded by the Indo-

Iranians of Mesopotamia and Syria.

The rule of the Mittani empire

extended from the Zagros Mountains

in Iran to the Mediterranean.

They fought over the control of

Syria with the Egyptians until a truce

was agreed upon. The empire fell to

the Hittites, however, and the

Assyrians took over the region.

Archaeologists hope the discovery

will shed more light on the city and

the daily lives of its inhabitants. For

now, however, they have covered the

area with tarpaulin pinned with

gravel before it once again disappears

under the water.

Iraq

Anchal Vohra

The remains of Zakhiku became

visible as the water receded

FROM OUR

CORRESPONDENT

The face of Bondi Beach is changing —

backpackers have been pushed out and

replaced by a wave of women surfers

A

s Sydney shivered

through its coldest June

in 30 years last week,

Joel Katz strolled along

Bondi Beach past the

world’s oldest surf lifesaving club,

pondering an emptier, altered

landscape.

The throngs of bronzed young

travellers are no more, shut out by

Covid-19, leaving the beachside bars

and cafés where they worked

struggling for staff. On Wednesday

Noah’s Backpackers, the 280-bed

beachfront hostel, Bondi’s largest,

was sold for almost $70 million

(£40 million). Its $55 (£31) a night

beds will be replaced by what the

new owners describe as an

upmarket boutique hotel.

“We miss the travellers and the

backpackers because their energy is

not here,” Katz, 65, a semi-retired

restaurateur, said.

At the Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life

Saving Club, formed in 1907, the

business of saving lives on the beach,

visited by 2.9 million people in 2018,

is down. In the past year 117

swimmers were saved, the lowest

number in almost seven years. The

drop in rescues — with no loss of life

— is attributed to the dearth of

travellers and migrants who, studies

show, account for nearly half of all

those rescued in the Australian surf.

It is not only the pandemic that is

changing the nation’s best-known

beach and surf culture. Soaring

property prices have whittled away

Bondi’s once raffish, edgy vibe as a

well-heeled, more cosmopolitan

populace moves in. Times are even

changing at the surf rescue club,

long a male fortress.

Last week it won a planning

tussle with the local council to

begin renovations that will offer

more sorely needed changing

rooms and other facilities for

women. Almost half the flow of

recruits to the 1,500-member club

are female.

Andrew Hewitt, 64, a pilot, has

run on Bondi’s sands for more than

40 years and recalls a less gentrified

past. “There were drugs, addicts,

needles on the back of the beach,

alcoholics,” he said. “It was unsafe.

Now it’s the hotspot of Sydney.”

David Addison, who swims at the

beach all year round, recalls the

warring gangs that marauded on

Bondi and nearby beaches in the

1980s, when sewage regularly

polluted Sydney’s eastern beaches.

“It was a lot rougher earlier on,” he

said. “There were years when there

were a lot of altercations.”

Close observers of Sydney’s beach

culture have watched as the sandy

shores improve for women. As a

teenager Kathy Lette, the London-

based Australian writer, exposed

the brutally sexist undercurrent of

the surfing tribes in the semi-

autobiographical novel Puberty

Blues.

“Surfie girls in the Seventies were

little more than a life support to a

pair of breasts,” she said. “We were

human handbags, draped

decoratively over the arms of some

bloke.”

Lette, 63, who spends four

months a year in Australia — much

of it at the beach with her sisters —

believes her first book initiated the

changing attitudes on the beaches.

“I’m pleased to say that girls now go

to the beach predominantly to surf

or exercise,” she said.

“The book and the movie had an

immediate impact on Australia’s

surfing culture. Surfing schools,

which had always been exclusively

male, were inundated with

membership requests from teenage

girls.”

Although Australia’s best known

beach has finally shrugged off its

rough reputation, a severe storm in

April lifted concrete at the outdoor

swimming pool and huge waves

swept away the sand — a

phenomenon the suburb’s mayor

attributed to the increasing effects

of climate change.

A study commissioned by the

council has forecast that the beach

will recede dramatically — by about

65ft (20 metres) by 2050 and almost

147ft by 2100. For now, residents

simply want the backpackers to

return, before Bondi vanishes.

Surfing schools are now having to

improve their facilities for women

Bernard Lagan

SYDNEY