The American composer, songwriter and pianist, whose prolific output provided a chart-topping playlist for the 1960s and 70s, with hits like I Say a Little Prayer, has died.

By AFP

Legendary American pop composer, songwriter and pianist Burt Bacharach, whose prolific output provided a chart-topping playlist for the 1960s and 1970s with hits like “I Say a Little Prayer,” has died in Los Angeles at the age of 94.

Bacharach worked with a constellation of stars during his decades-long career, from Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin to Dusty Springfield and Tom Jones. He toured with Marlene Dietrich and collaborated with the White Stripes.

Bacharach – who died Wednesday of natural causes at his home, his publicist Tina Brausman told AFP – was known for romantic, melancholic ballads that blurred the line between jazz and pop, and regularly won over fans on both sides of the Atlantic.

He earned a flurry of accolades: three Oscars including for the score of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” an Emmy, eight Grammy awards including a lifetime achievement prize, two Golden Globes and induction in the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

The list of hits is long: “Walk On By,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” and “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” are only a few of the best known. He penned nearly 50 Top 100 hits and nine songs that went to number one on the charts.

Bacharach enjoyed a long and fruitful partnership with Dionne Warwick, including on the 1985 power collaboration “That’s What Friends Are For,” a cover of a song first co-written in 1982 with Carole Bayer Sager, who was one of his four wives along with actress Angie Dickinson.

“Keep smilin’, keep shinin’ // Knowing you can always count on me for sure // That’s what friends are for,” said the lyrics, which brought Warwick together with Elton John, Stevie Wonder and Gladys Knight for a fundraiser to combat the AIDS epidemic.

Tributes poured in from across the showbiz spectrum — everyone from KISS frontman Paul Stanley to Beach Boys co-founder Brian Wilson offered condolences and praise for his signature optimism and effortless orchestrations.

“A titan of beautiful and effortless song,” Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan wrote on Twitter.

– Arranger, singer, writer –

A pianist passionate about jazz, Bacharach was born on May 12, 1928 in Kansas City, Missouri, but moved to New York in his early years. As a teenager, he snuck into clubs to hear the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.

He studied music theory and composition at several American universities, before serving in the US Army in the post-World War II era.

Before long, he embarked on tour with a variety of singers, and was eventually hired by Dietrich as an arranger and musical director for her tours.

In 1957, he met lyricist Hal David, who died in 2012, with whom he would form one of the most successful partnerships in the music industry.

A few years later at a recording session with the Drifters, they would discover a young backup singer who would become their standard bearer: Warwick.

Between 1962 and 1968, they wrote 20 titles for Warwick that rose into the American Top 40, seven of them Top 10 hits, including “Walk On By” and “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.” At that time, the duo also worked with other artists like Springfield (“The Look of Love”), Jones (“What’s New, Pussycat?) and the Carpenters (“Close to You”).

And they wrote the music for Broadway’s “Promises, Promises,” Neil Simon’s stage adaptation of a Billy Wilder film.

The songwriting duo won two Oscars for “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”: best original score, and best original song for “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.” In 1973, a financial dispute broke out between the two men. For 10 years, they spoke only through lawyers and never worked together again.

– Career resurgence –

Bacharach’s career hit a new upswing when he began working with Bayer Sager. He won another Oscar in 1982 for the theme song to the film “Arthur.” That same year, Neil Diamond released “Heartlight” — inspired by the hit film “E.T. the Extra Terrestrial.” In 1986, Bacharach and Bayer Sager hit number one again with the Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald duet “On My Own.” In the 1990s, he worked with Elvis Costello and appeared as himself in the “Austin Powers” films.

Thereafter, he traveled around the world, performing his songs and collaborating with elite symphony orchestras. The coronavirus pandemic would eventually curtail his touring schedule.

“Never be ashamed to write a melody that people remember,” Bacharach once said. In 2012, he and David earned the prestigious Gershwin Prize for Popular Song from the Library of Congress, presented to him by then president Barack Obama.

Demonstrating his longevity and cross-generational fan base, Bacharach sang at the Glastonbury festival in Britain in 2015 at age 87, serenading the crowd with an hour-long set of hits.

The crowd bathed “in the romantic, rose-tinted glow of the easy listening king,” reported the Guardian, adding that pop queen Adele was among those watching in admiration.

Bacharach is survived by his fourth wife Jane and three children. A fourth child, Nikki, predeceased him.

Germany did a “good job” of delivering Iris-T anti-aircraft systems and ammunition for them last year, Zelensky said, while appearing to admit that Kiev has been actively spying on Berlin.

“We have changed our relationship and understanding. We received IRIS-T anti-aircraft systems, for which I am very grateful to Germany. You saved a lot of lives. I told the chancellor: Olaf, listen, we’re short on rockets. I know that you don’t have any more yourself, we also have an intelligence service. I know you give us everything you have,” Zelensky stated, adding that Scholz somehow managed to push manufacturers into producing munitions for Iris-T faster.

The looming supply of modern tanks to Ukraine has also proved to be a “difficult” issue for Kiev and Berlin, as Scholz was reluctant to do so. Zelensky claimed he has had to constantly remind the chancellor about the purported importance of such support and its alleged value for the whole of Europe.

“Now we are yet again in a difficult phase with this debate about the German tanks, it is emotional and complex. I have to force him to help Ukraine and constantly convince him that this help is not for us, but for the Europeans,” Zelensky stated.

Germany has long been reluctant to deliver modern tanks to Kiev, with Scholz giving in to Kiev’s demands on January 25 and pledging to send in 14 Leopard 2 armored vehicles, as well as allowing other European operators of the German-made tanks to re-export them to Ukraine. Apart from that, Berlin also pledged to send in some 187 older Leopard 1 models to Ukraine from its stocks as well.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz gave in to Kiev’s demands on January 25, promising both versions as soon as he could get them delivered. The Federal Security Council formally approved the export license for the panzers on February 3, but did not announce the numbers until Tuesday, according to Der Spiegel and the German edition of Business Insider (BI).

The plan for the Leopard 2s is to assemble about two tank battalions – 61 tanks in total – from both the German military and other EU and NATO countries. The first 14 panzers are supposed to cross into Ukraine “at the end of March.”

The older Leopard 1s will take a little longer. The Flensburger Fahrzeugbau Gesellschaft (FFG) has between 90 and 99 tanks at their factory near the Danish border. According to Der Spiegel, they have already refurbished “almost 30” and may deliver them “as early as spring.”

Meanwhile, Rheinmetall has made a deal with Italy to buy 88 of the Leopards retired years ago and placed in storage. They need to be rebuilt completely before they can be sent to Kiev, a process that will take months, Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger told Reuters. He estimated the company would be able to deliver up to 25 Leopards this year, while the rest would come in 2024.

While this puts the total number of Leopard 1s at 187, the media noted that many of the tanks will have to be cannibalized for parts during the refurbishing process, so the actual number delivered to Ukraine will certainly be lower.

“How many Leopard 1A5 main battle tanks will actually be delivered to Ukraine depends on the necessary repair work,” said a joint statement from two German ministries, as quoted by BI.

Ammunition for the panzers’ 105mm main gun may also present a logistical challenge. Der Spiegel claims there were only 25,000 rounds available and that producing more could take months. Meanwhile, Insider argued that using standardized NATO tank ammunition could help Ukraine’s supply situation. The outlet noted that however many Leopards eventually arrive in Ukraine, they will be “too late anyway” to meet the expected Russian “spring offensive.”

Kiev has demanded at least 300 Western tanks and hundreds more armored vehicles, having apparently expended its prewar arsenal, as well as hundreds of legacy Soviet-era tanks supplied by eastern NATO members last year.

The Leopard 1 was designed in the 1950s and upgraded through the 1980s. Germany retired the last of its own Leopard 1s by 2003, leaving the tank in active service with the militaries of Brazil, Chile, Greece and Türkiye at the moment.

– Germany is in line with NATO tactics which also seems more like a stagnation tactics to prolong the war by not giving Ukraine more technologically superior competent weapons but to make it look like they are giving a lot more help in a different way.

European allies’ reluctance to make good on earlier signals despite intense lobbying from Berlin in recent days is raising doubt that enough tanks can arrive in Ukraine in time for an expected Russian offensive.

It is also leaving Germany’s government in an awkward position it has sought to avoid: becoming the sole purveyor of a large contingent of Western-made main battle tanks for Ukraine. Since the start of the war, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has made a point of coordinating weapon deliveries with allies.

Europe’s sudden misgivings about supplying Ukraine with tanks reveal that, as with ammunition and heavy artillery, North Atlantic Treaty Organization members in the region have fewer operational tanks that they can spare at a time of heightened geopolitical tension than was originally estimated by experts and officials.

“The fact that there are so few operational battle tanks and that they are so incompatible with each other should be taken as an alarm signal in Europe,” said Nico Lange, a former senior defense official in the German government and now a senior fellow at the Munich Security Conference.

Britain and France, which have the biggest armed forces among European NATO allies, have around 220 tanks each, but it is unclear how many are actually battle-ready, according to GlobalFirepower, an online database. Germany has a similar number of tanks, with government surveys showing that less than half of them can be deployed because the rest are in need of repair. By contrast, Russia started the war with over 12,000 tanks, while Ukraine had nearly 2,000.

So far, only Germany and Poland have approved substantial deliveries of tanks for Kyiv—around 200 and 74, respectively, including a mixture of new and older models. Canada has committed four modern German-made tanks.

The U.S. did pledge to supply 31 of its Abrams tanks but U.S. officials now say it might take up to two years before they arrive on the battlefield. Britain has committed 14 of its Challenger 2 tanks and said they would be delivered by the end of next month, while France is set to send AMX-10 RC armored-fighting vehicles, which move on wheels rather than tracks but are often considered light tanks because of their heavy firepower.

When Germany said last month that it would authorize allies to re-export German-made tanks to Ukraine after weeks of resisting the demand from Kyiv and other European capitals, the move was expected to unleash a slew of commitments by neighbors to dig into their own stocks of Leopard 2s, which military experts consider one of the best-performing tanks in the world, and of the older Leopard 1s.

There are more than 2,000 Leopard 2 tanks in European stocks, yet besides Berlin only Warsaw so far has committed to send any of them to Kyiv, along with 60 other tanks based on Soviet models, while Lisbon has pledged three. Germany has pledged to send 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine by next month, and to provide another five on standby as spares. It also authorized the export of 178 older Leopard 1 tanks that the government had sold back to private companies.

Mr. Scholz, who only yielded after President Biden also committed to donate U.S. tanks, has been calling his European counterparts in an effort to secure commitments, German officials said.

The diplomatic push notched its first success on Tuesday when the Netherlands and Denmark committed to help finance the purchase of around 100 decommissioned Leopard 1 tanks that are now owned by German companies Rheinmetall AG and FFG mbH. The Leopard 1 was decommissioned in Germany two decades ago but private firms and other governments still own an undisclosed number of the older tanks.

Under the agreement, the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany will jointly finance the refurbishment of the tanks and provide training for Ukrainian crews. The two smaller nations will, however, not send any of their own tanks to Ukraine, officials said.

France has ruled out sending any of its just over 200 main battle tanks, known as Leclercs, with officials citing technical and logistical difficulties. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry responded by producing a video asking for Leclercs that went viral on social media.

Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa told parliament on Thursday that his country was carrying out maintenance on Leopard 2 tanks and would deliver three vehicles in March.

Among the other countries that initially signaled they might send tanks to Ukraine if Germany allowed it are Finland, Sweden, Belgium and Spain. Those countries haven’t so far made any commitment, although officials from some of them have said they would work together with allies on training and financing.

The Spanish government was assessing how it could help the tank initiative, Defense Minister Margarita Robles told reporters last month.

“While it is true Spain has Leopards, the vast majority of those which could be delivered, need to undergo an upgrade,” she said at the time. Her spokeswoman didn’t reply to a request for comment.

A spokesman for the Belgian government said the country had no tanks to give, while a senior Finnish official said that Helsinki would be part of the Leopard 2 cooperation in some way, without providing any detail. The official said that Finland, which shares a 1,300-kilometer-long border with Russia, has a policy of not revealing what kind of aid it sends to Ukraine.

A senior NATO official said Finland signaled it would most likely hold direct tank deliveries until it officially joins the alliance, a move that is currently being blocked by Turkey. Even after it becomes a member, Finland, which has around 240 tanks, would only be able to spare a few, the official said. The Czech Republic has committed 90 Soviet-era tanks.

“Germany will likely have to be the biggest contributor to the European tank initiative, because it has the largest combined stock owned by the industry and the armed forces among the countries willing to participate,” said Minna Alander, a research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

The mine was to export coking coal, for which there is no real alternative even as thermal coal is phased out.

The axing, the first ever on habitat protection grounds, just adds to fast-rising hurdles against fossil fuel investment in price caps, new taxes, and new green-tape regulation that could make it harder to build a bridge to a new green economy.

Bridges have to be supported at both ends, in this case with more fossil fuel investment to fill in the substantial gaps in supply as firmed and reliable renewable generation builds up.

It’s added regulatory pressure from a government that never seems to acknowledge how much its own finances are propped up by fossil fuel exports that got Australia through the pandemic and the global inflation crisis in far better shape than almost all of its peers.

Some of the threatened projects, including developments owned by Woodside, ConocoPhillips, Whitehaven and Glencore, already were under pressure, hit successively by royalty revenue grabs from the Queensland government, caps on coal prices in NSW to help electricity consumers, and Ms Plibersek’s plans to beef up the EPBA that will encourage the climate lawfare warriors.

And that comes on top of temporary east coast gas price caps and a long-term demand by the Albanese government that gas producers charge only “reasonable” prices, in order to buffer both consumers and the government’s political fortunes.

This week gas giant ConocoPhillips said the pricing policy would help decide if its gas development billions go overseas instead.

The government’s changes to the EBPC Act will have to pass the Senate, exposing them to maximalist demands from the Greens and the two other crossbenchers the government needs.

The Greens want to add broad climate change impacts including an explicit climate trigger alongside environment and habitat damage, opening the prosect of more lawfare campaigns and overreaching judgements from the bench that attempt to link a planetary greenhouse gas emissions problem to individual resources projects in Australia.

Europe’s energy crisis started in 2021 well before the Ukraine war, and showed how precarious the energy balance still is, with intermittent wind and solar unable to cope without gas, nuclear or coal back-up.

The loss of Russian gas has added pressure to make up supply elsewhere. Demands to halt all new projects at a stroke will just destabilise an already difficult global energy market even further.

The Biden administration is ahead of everyone with its $US400 billion subsidy to accelerate green technology. In his State of the Union address this week, President Joe Biden also complained about the oil companies’ $US200 billion profit last year: “I think that’s outrageous. Why? They invested too little of that profit in increasing domestic production,” he said, adding: “we are going to need oil and gas for a while”.

Yet Labor Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ 6000-word essay on the Australian economy acknowledged nothing remotely comparable about our present sources of wealth, or their essential role in supporting a balanced transition here and globally.

The aim of the Minsk agreement was to end the fighting between the Ukrainian army and ethnic Russians in the Donbas region of Ukraine. It was the responsibility of the four participants in the treaty – Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine – to ensure that both sides followed the terms of the deal. But in December, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in an interview with a German magazine, that there was never any intention of implementing the deal, instead, the plan was to use the time to make Ukraine stronger in order to prepare for a war with Russia. So, clearly, from the very beginning, the United States intended to provoke a war with Russia.

On September 5, 2014, Germany, France, Ukraine and Russia all signed Minsk, but the treaty failed and the fighting resumed. On February 12, 2015, Minsk 2 was signed, but that failed, as well. Please, watch this short segment on You Tube by Amit Sengupta who gives a brief rundown of Minsk and its implications: (I transcribed the piece myself and any mistakes are mine.)

Catholic schools in NSW are fighting radical reforms to the national literacy and numeracy tests, warning that new reporting rules will fail to identify thousands of struggling students who need ­urgent help with basic reading, writing and maths.

Online testing, earlier exam dates and simplified reports are among the biggest changes in 15 years to the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy, to be considered on Friday by federal, state and territory education ministers.

Ministers have already agreed to move the usual May tests to start on March 15 this year, with all pen-and-paper testing replaced with interactive online exams.

Other changes proposed by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority mean this year’s results cannot be compared to the past 14 years of data – making it much harder for parents or teachers to track the ­impact of school disruptions during the Covid-19 pandemic.

ACARA wants to simplify the way it reports student results to parents and schools, by scrapping the categories of “below national minimum standard (NMS) and “at NMS”.

ACARA’s existing definition of “below NMS” states that students “are at risk of being unable to progress satisfactorily at school without targeted intervention’’.

The proposed “developing” category of the poorest performers waters down the description to: “The student has not demon­strated that they have achieved the learning outcomes expected and may need additional support to continue progressing ­satisfactorily’’.

ACARA, a taxpayer-funded agency, refused to release its reform recommendations on Thursday, citing confidentiality. But organisations briefed by ACARA have raised concerns about the abolition of “minimum standards”, and the break in reporting students’ achievement over time.

In a letter to ACARA, Catholic Schools NSW chief executive Dallas McInerney warned against “losing sight of the most at-risk students’’. He estimated that ACARA would categorise 10 per cent of Year 9 students as ­“developing” their writing skills – a figure lower than the actual 14.3 per cent of students who fell below the national minimum standard in 2022.

“In Year 9 writing, around 12,000 students will be designated as no longer ‘at risk’ after the proposed changes are introduced,’’ Mr McInerney wrote.

ACARA also plans to get rid of the 10 bands of achievement – a confusing measurement spanning the lowest Band 1 in Year 3 to the highest Band 10 in Year 9. Instead, the four new proficiency levels will be applied to each year level, making a student’s achievement clearer to parents.

Mr McInerney said he feared education ministers would ­“sleepwalk into throwing out a significant amount of rich educational data’’ by accepting changes that mean data cannot be compared to previous years.

“They need to tap the brakes and think long and hard before they make a decision,’’ he said.

“In a time of falling learning outcomes, we should be putting the microscope closer to the problem, not pulling it back.’’

Centre for Independent Studies education program director Glenn Fahey said the “developing’’ descriptor did not make it clear to parents that their child was “well below proficiency’’.

“The minimum standard is a really low level of achievement and it doesn’t equal satisfactory,’’ Mr Fahey said.

ACARA wants to change its reporting method this year to coincide with the earlier test date – meaning children sit the test with two months less learning – and the transition to online testing that adapts questions to each child’s ability.

Many students who struggled with the old pen-and-paper tests simply failed to answer the questions – but educators have found they are more likely to complete online tests with tailored questions to measure their knowledge.

Mr McInerney has warned ACARA the new reporting regime will prevent longitudinal analysis for several years and “interrupt numerous policy and program evaluations”.

“A huge range of programs at both the system and school level are evaluated based on viewing NAPLAN results over time, and so an unnecessary time break would substantially set back program and school improvement efforts,’’ he wrote.

Mr McInerney, who runs the biggest Catholic school organisation in Australia, has been publicly touted to fill a NSW Liberal Party vacancy in the Senate triggered by the death of Jim Molan, but has not sought preselection.

An ACARA spokesperson said an independent review of ­NAPLAN in 2020 had argued that the existing national minimum standard was not set at a “challenging enough” level.

“Options for ministers to consider provide more challenging but reasonable standards reported in a clear, easy to understand way,’’ the spokesperson said.

“(They) will identify those students whose results indicate they are likely to need additional support in order to progress satisfactorily. These options have been developed in consultation with expert teachers, education authorities and parents.’’

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare would not say if he supported ACARA’s proposals.

NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said she would raise the concerns of stakeholders, including Catholic Schools NSW, with her interstate colleagues at Friday’s meetings.

She said NAPLAN must be a “rigorous and modern national diagnostic test that is timely for teachers and helpful for parents’’.

Queensland Education Minister Grace Grace said she would “carefully consider all the options’’ at today’s meeting.

. Was the Russian invasion a violation of international law? Answer – No, the Russian invasion should be approved under United Nations Article 51

. Could the war have been avoided if Ukraine declared neutrality and met Putin’s reasonable demands?