Month: December 2019

Deux ans après sa présentation au Festival de Toronto, et plusieurs rebondissements, Green Inferno d’Eli Roth sort enfin en salles aux Etats-Unis.

Sortira ? Sortira pas ? Attendu sur les écrans depuis deux ans, Green Inferno d’Eli Roth dispose enfin d’une date de sortie aux Etats-Unis !

La nouvelle date fixée est le 25 septembre 2015. Selon Variety, le film devrait sortir sur 1 000 écrans, appuyé par une campagne digitale.

==> Voir ou revoir la bande-annonce de Green Inferno, ainsi que notre sélection “épouvante” 2015

Après rebondissements, et notamment une première date de sortie annulée, le film de cannibales présenté au Festival de Toronto 2013 a été pris en main par un nouveau distributeur, en la personne de Jason Blum, le célèbre producteur et distributeur de franchises à succès comme Paranormal Activity. Plus précisément, comme le détaille Variety, la société Blumhouse Production s’associe avec Universal et Focus Features pour sortir le film outre-Atlantique. 

Quid de la France ? Précisons que ce film hommage d’Eli Roth à Cannibal Holocauste ne dispose à ce jour pas de date de sortie chez nous. 

Top 5 – Les genres douteux 

Top 5 Emissions Bonus

 

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South Korea was once the largest source of children for international adoptions. The U.S. became their main destination. Some Korean-born adoptees feel distant from both the country of their birth and the country where they were raised, but in recent years, many have gone back to build ties with their birth families.

In September, Seattle resident Barbara Kim celebrated Chuseok, the Korean midautumn festival, with her family members in Seoul. Chuseok is a time to give thanks for plentiful harvests, and for Kim, who was adopted by an American family in the 1960s, this was a particularly special occasion: She was able to spend the holiday with several of her birth relatives.

At the celebration, they and a group of South Korean orphans, now in their teens and 20s, dug into platters of bulgogi, kimbap, japche and other traditional Korean dishes.

Kim was among the first wave of a 200,000-strong exodus of adoptees, as South Korea became the world’s first source of international adoptions. She was born in 1955, two years after the Korean War cease-fire.

In recent decades, adoptees like Kim have been returning to South Korea to find out more about where they come from, build ties with their birth families and connect with others with similar experiences.

After being separated from her three siblings for about half a century, Kim managed to track all of them down and reunite with them. She says they have overcome an initial sense of awkwardness in knowing one another and feel proud to be part of the same family.

“We have a lot in common, even though we grew up so far apart,” she says. “I feel like there’s this sense of feeling like we belong.”

Abandoned, then adopted

Now 64, Kim was the eldest child born to impoverished parents at a time when South Korea was recovering from the conflict that killed millions and left about 100,000 children orphaned.

After giving birth, Kim’s mother abandoned her in the hospital. Korean society traditionally prefers boys over girls, and Kim was born with hip dysplasia. Kim’s grandmother raised her until she was about 8. Her parents wanted nothing to do with her, and eventually, she was sent to an orphanage.

Barbara Kim, a Seattle resident who was adopted by an American family in the 1960s, has returned to South Korea to spend time with her birth siblings. “We have a lot in common even though we grew up so far apart,” she says.

The orphanage was run by Harry Holt, the American evangelical Christian who, with his wife Bertha, founded an international adoption agency that matched thousands of Korean orphans with parents in the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s. A family of dairy farmers in Nebraska adopted Kim, but when they fell on hard times, she says, they vented their anger by abusing her.

“And I remember one time thinking: ‘Dear God, wasn’t it bad enough I had a first mother that was so horrible? Did you have to bring me to a second mother that was like this?’ ” Kim recalls.

Kim later went into the U.S. foster care system. Studying became her refuge. She earned a bachelor’s degree, then a master’s degree and, after that, worked for the very adoption agency that sent her to the U.S.

“For the first time, we’re developing this relationship”

Despite the difficulties she faced growing up, Kim says she feels grateful for the opportunities that adoption by a U.S. family brought her — particularly when she considers the stigma and other challenges disabled people often contend with in South Korea.

Others are still wrestling with their experience of adoption. Denver-based filmmaker Glenn Morey, who was adopted by an American family after he was abandoned as an infant in Seoul, interviewed 100 Korean orphans raised in the U.S. for Side by Side, a film project with his wife Julie Morey.

Despite the diversity of adoptees’ experiences, certain threads connect their stories, he says. Chief among these is “a sense of loss, sadness, and perhaps even trauma related to thinking about it, or remembering in some cases their time in Korea and how their lives got started.”

One woman, born in 1979, told Morey: “I feel like I was sold. I feel like I don’t know who I am. I don’t even know if my name is real or my birthdate is real.”

Another said, “I never felt I was actually Asian until later on in life.”

When Kim first became acquainted with her siblings in South Korea in the 1970s, she didn’t speak Korean and they didn’t speak English. They found one another after one of her sisters happened to read a Korean magazine piece in which Kim had written about her life story. Through the magazine publisher, who contacted Kim’s father, Kim, her sister and a brother were able to meet.

After that, there were decades of little or no contact, and they only started to build their relationship in earnest over the past year, when Kim decided to spend more time in Seoul.

“I decided that I wanted to stay here to learn the language so I can get to know my family,” Kim explains, “and for the first time, we’re developing this relationship.”

She and her sister and brother found another sister who had been placed in an orphanage. Nobody had adopted her, and she had gone to work in a factory.

When Kim and her siblings visited her in 1978, “They all cried to see me because maybe they thought I was not doing so well,” the sister recalled at the Chuseok gathering. She asked that NPR not use her name because of the stigma of being an orphan in South Korea. “But I just didn’t feel anything, because I had lived my whole life thinking that I was alone. I didn’t have anybody. So I just felt blank, empty.”

“Children who were not fully Korean would never be accepted”

Unlike Kim, many of South Korea’s early adoptees were biracial children whose fathers were American GIs fighting in the Korean War.

In a country that valued homogeneity, “adoption initially was thought of as like the ‘solution’ to mixed-race children,” says Eleana Kim, an anthropologist at the University of California, Irvine.

In its early years, the South Korean government crafted a narrative of a racially homogeneous nation, she says, “the idea being that children who were not fully Korean would never be accepted in South Korean society. And the South Korean government realized that there was an interest among Americans to adopt these children.”

In 1965, Son Jeong-seon, then vice minister of welfare and society, told lawmakers debating South Korea’s adoption law: “One can’t help but feel ashamed by the fact that [an ethnic Korean] would get together with a foreign person and give birth to a baby that doesn’t belong to our homogeneous people.”

Critics of South Korea’s adoption system say the government also sought to “export” other stigmatized groups, including disabled children or those born to unmarried women, via adoption.

There were also economic factors in play, says Eleana Kim, noting that South Korea spends less on social welfare than almost any other developed economy. “Why do people believe that it’s better to remove a child from its country of origin rather than to provide money for the parents who can’t afford to raise it?” she asks.

Many Korean adoptees were not truly orphans, she says. They were abandoned because their parents couldn’t afford to raise them, and international adoptions allowed South Korea to shift some of its welfare burden overseas. Adoption agencies charged adoptive parents hefty fees, which at times exceeded Korea’s gross domestic product per capita.

“A law that produces orphans”

“We can ask if South Korea is fulfilling the state’s duty to protect children, and the answer is pretty doubtful,” says Kyung-eun Lee, the director of Amnesty International Korea and a former South Korean official who worked on adoption policy.

Lee says that according to international law, children must not be separated from their parents unless a court rules it’s in the kids’ interest. But South Korea, she says, leaves it to parents and adoption agencies to make the decisions, which South Korean courts simply rubber-stamp.

She argues that South Korea’s government has allowed parents and adoption agencies to erase children’s identities in order to make them more adoptable.

“They were made orphans,” she says.

In 2013, South Korea’s adoption law was revised, requiring all international adoptees to have family registration showing whom the birth parents are. This appears to have reduced abuses of the system, says Lee.

Sung Changhyun, an official with South Korea’s Ministry of Health and Welfare, told NPR via email that since the 2013 reforms, Korean courts have “held adoption confirmation hearings with sufficient review and investigation required to approve adoptions.”

Sung did not respond to NPR’s request for comment on allegations of birth record falsification.

Since the 2013 reforms were enacted, South Korea’s number of international adoptions has declined. There were 755 in 2012 and 303 last year.

Sung said the government will initiate additional reforms that “will further strengthen public responsibility over the entire adoption procedure and establish adoption system that prioritizes children’s interests.”

While reforms have stopped the falsification of documents, Lee believes the government still fails to do an adequate job of protecting children’s rights throughout the adoption process.

“The [adoption] law, even after many amendments, to this day is basically still a law that produces orphans,” she says.

NPR Seoul producer Se Eun Gong contributed to this story.

Samir Kada lived next door to Jimmy Aldaoud in Baghdad. Kada is one of dozens of Iraqis from Michigan deported from the U.S. in 2018.

The apartment in Baghdad where Jimmy Aldaoud lived — and died, just two months after being deported from the U.S. — has been cleaned and emptied. But on the windowsill in the bedroom, there’s a remnant of the fear he felt about being sent to a country where he’d never been: two plastic toy pistols with orange foam tips and bright pink suction-cup darts.

“He would sleep with these in his hands,” says Samir Kada, another deportee from the U.S. who lives next door and looked out for him. “He said, ‘If anybody comes, I’m going to pull it on them. I swear to God.’ “

Aldaoud, 41, died Aug. 6, two weeks after making a video saying he was scared and sick, and begging to go back to the United States. His family and friends say he had diabetes and had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

In the apartment, next to the toy guns, there’s an unused syringe for the insulin Aldaoud would forget to refrigerate and leave out in the heat.

Aldaoud’s death caused an outcry in his Michigan community of Chaldean Christians, a minority that, along with other minorities, has faced discrimination and sometimes persecution and even targeted killings in Iraq. Human rights groups and members of Congress have called for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to delay deportations.

In 2017, the Trump administration ordered stepped-up deportations of Iraqis convicted of felonies who were in the U.S. legally but had not become citizens. U.S. and international law prevent deportation back to countries where deportees would be under threat. But ICE has continued to deport Iraqis to a country now wracked by anti-government protests and renewed violence.

Many of the deportees hadn’t seen Iraq since they were children, and some had never seen it at all. Most served time for felonies in U.S. prisons years ago, and those convictions have prevented them from becoming citizens.

Aldaoud was born in Greece to Iraqi refugee parents who came to the U.S. legally in 1979, when he was a baby. He spoke no Arabic and had never been to Iraq when ICE picked him up in Michigan as part of a sweep in 2017. He’d served time for convictions in a series of criminal charges over the course of two decades.

After almost two years in immigration detention, the 41-year-old Christian man was sent to Najaf, a Shiite holy city in southern Iraq.

“His family called me. They told me, ‘Please go pick up Jimmy.’ I mean, you know, he ain’t got no papers. He ain’t got no clothes — nothing, nothing — not even a penny,” says Kada, another member of Michigan’s Chaldean Christian community, deported in 2018. “Anyways, he came, and he went into a depression.”

Kada and others who knew Aldaoud say he was afraid to leave the apartment.

In a video shot outside the shuttered shops on this street in Baghdad this summer, Jimmy Aldaoud said he was scared and sick. He died two weeks later.

“He talked to himself all day — ‘God, please take me back home; please, God, I don’t know nothing over here. I’m scared. I’m Christian. I’m this, I’m that.’ He was walking over here naked, like, with no clothes. I told him, ‘We can’t do that over here.’ Like, he was going crazy.”

Kada, 39, says ICE deported Aldaoud with a month’s worth of insulin and no other medication. Asked by NPR, ICE would say only that it deported him with an adequate supply of medication.

Aldaoud called Kada in early August, crying, saying he was on the floor and he couldn’t breathe. An ambulance took Aldaoud to the hospital, which discharged him a few hours later. When an Iraqi friend checked on him later that same day, he found Aldaoud lifeless on the floor. The morgue listed Aldaoud’s cause of death as heart failure.

“I don’t have anything to prove who I am”

Most of the deportees have no valid Iraqi identification documents. They are sent from the U.S. with no passport, only a one-way travel document known as a laissez passer, issued by the Iraqi Embassy in Washington, D.C. With no way to prove who they are, they are subject to arrest at Iraqi checkpoints, can’t rent apartments or even receive money via wire transfers.

“We can’t speak Arabic,” says Kada. “We can’t read and write. We can’t do nothing. We can’t go anywhere.”

Nashat Butris was deported in July with no money and no clothes. He says he stayed with Jimmy Aldaoud for a few days when he arrived. Now he has a bunk in a sparsely furnished room at a shelter run by a church in Baghdad. He has no relatives in Iraq and speaks only broken Arabic.

“It’s just shocking. Everything is shocking to me,” he says.

Butris’ deportation resulted from a conviction for cocaine possession years ago. The laissez passer issued by the Iraqi Embassy includes a photo of him wearing an orange prison jumpsuit.

Naser al-Shimary cuddles his dog. “She is all the friends and family I have here,” he says. Shimary says people in his neighborhood tell him dogs are religiously unclean. He is afraid she will be poisoned.

“This government here, they’re not believing in this travel document,” he says. “I have no IDs and I’m not allowed to leave this compound because I don’t have anything to prove who I am.”

Kada, who owned businesses in Michigan, is luckier than most. He has money — enough to pay for the Iraqi ID he says cost him $6,000, and which allows him greater freedom of movement than other deportees. But most, like Butris and Aldaoud, have little or nothing.

“We don’t want another Jimmy Aldaoud”

Over the past year, the Iraqi Embassy has issued travel documents for about 140 Iraqis due to be deported, according to a foreign ministry official in Baghdad who asked not to be identified in order to speak with NPR candidly. So far, about 60 of those 140 have been deported.

After Aldaoud’s death, the embassy stopped issuing travel documents for those scheduled for deportation but known to have significant health problems.

“We don’t want another Jimmy Aldaoud,” said the foreign ministry source.

Some of the deportees agree to be sent to Iraq simply to avoid what ICE tells them could be years in immigration detention.

“Honestly, the pressure that the United States government put on me and what I had to endure, this was the only way to get physical freedom,” explains Benjamin Rayes, 47, a machine tool autoworker in Michigan who was deported to Iraq in early December.

Rayes served four years in a U.S. prison for insurance fraud. After his release from a halfway house two years ago, ICE arrested him and placed him in immigration detention before putting him on a plane to Baghdad.

His life so far in Iraq is tightly constrained. The father of two girls, ages 7 and 10, Rayes says he was interrogated for hours when he landed in Baghdad without an Iraqi ID. His Chaldean Christian family is originally from the north of Iraq, but all of his relatives have emigrated. For now, he’s staying with friends of friends in the south of Iraq. Without ID, he can’t travel even within the country to apply for the documents he needs.

Adding to the challenges facing deportees is the worsening violence since anti-government protests began raging in Baghdad and the southern provinces in October. Iranian-backed militias that are believed responsible for killing and abducting protesters blame “U.S. agents” for fomenting the protests.

Already in danger of arrest and detention, Iraqis affiliated with the U.S. risk being accused of being U.S. spies. For many deportees, tattoos, American accents and lack of Arabic language skills make them easy targets.

Despite intense pressure on Iraq to accept more deportees, Iraq refused until last year to issue travel documents for Iraqi citizens who refuse deportation. That policy changed with a new Iraqi government last year, according to another foreign ministry official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

“They tell me I’m not welcome”

Almost two years after he was deported, Naser al-Shimary lives in fear in southern Iraq. He was beaten last year by a group of strangers, and his neighbors were too frightened to help him. Now he sleeps with a kitchen knife next to him for protection. At night, he padlocks himself into the house.

“People refer to me as ‘the American,’ ” he says.

Like Samir Kada and other deportees, Shimary has visible tattoos, uncommon in Iraq. He says mosques refuse to let him in.

“They tell me I’m not welcome because tattoos signify bad character,” he says.

He loves his pet dog, but that’s caused trouble for him too. People in his neighborhood tell him dogs are religiously unclean and he fears she will be poisoned. “She is all the friends and family I have here,” he says.

Shimary, who used to play chess with Jimmy Aldaoud back in the U.S. while they were both in ICE detention, is a U.S.-certified mechanic. But he has struggled to find work in the south and is afraid to take a job in Baghdad or farther north, areas he thinks would be even more dangerous.

Back in the U.S., he had an auto body shop. His partner and son, who recently turned 5, are still there. The two visited him in Baghdad last year, but Shimary believes it’s too dangerous in Iraq for them to return. He’s hoping to find a way to resettle in another country with his family. For now, he relies on video calls to his son — including one to wish him happy birthday.

“He was like, ‘Papa, I saved you a piece of cake. If you want it, you gotta come here and get it,’ ” he says. Shimary says he laughed, “because I can’t show weakness,” but says it hurt.

He knows he won’t be going back.

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At least 20 high-speed railways are expected to start operation in 2020, according to Economic View’s calculation.

The Yinchuan-Xi’an high-speed railway is expected to open at the end of 2020. The trip between Yinchuan, capital of Ningxia Hui autonomous region, and Xi’an, capital of Northwest China’s Shaanxi province, will be shortened from 14 hours to 3 hours.

The Beijing-Shenyang high-speed railway, a line of around 698 kilometers, is expected to open at the end of 2020. Trips between Beijing and Shenyang, capital of Northeast China’s Liaoning province, will be halved to 2.5 hours.

The Taiyuan-Jiaozuo high-speed railway is expected to open in December 2020. The trip between Taiyuan, capital of North China’s Shanxi province, and Zhengzhou, capital of Central China’s Henan province, will halved to 2 hours.

The Weifang-Laixi high-speed railway is expected to open at the end of 2020 within East China’s Shandong province. It will shorten the trip between the provincial capital Ji’nan and Yantai to 2 hours.

In 2019, more than 5,000 km of high-speed railways went into operation. The total length of China’s high-speed railways has reached 35,000 km.

 

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2019 marks the year of closer China-Cambodia cooperation in culture and tourism, Cambodian senior officials and experts said.

The two Asian countries designated 2019 as the “China-Cambodia culture and tourism year,” and a variety of activities had been jointly organized to celebrate the year.

Closer tourism ties

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Tourism Minister Thong Khon said a series of events such as exhibitions, forums, cultural performances, visit of 2,000 Chinese envoys to Cambodia, and a Chinese caravan tour, among others had been jointly held to mark the year.

“We can say that it’s a fruitful year of cooperation in culture and tourism between the two countries,” he told Xinhua in a recent interview. “We believe that through these events, more and more Chinese tourists will visit Cambodia, and vice versa.”

The minister said Chinese tourists topped the list of foreign visitors coming to Cambodia in the first 10 months of 2019, with 2.02 million – a 24.4-percent increase year-on-year, accounting for 38 percent of all of Cambodia’s international tourists.

“We expect to receive 2.5 million Chinese tourists in the entirety of 2019,” he said. “The growth of Chinese tourists has greatly contributed to boosting Cambodia’s economy and to reducing poverty via job creations.”

Khon attributed the strong and steady growth of Chinese tourists to Cambodia to the excellent relationship between the two countries in combination with Cambodia’s peace, political stability, and attractive tourist destinations.

Also, there have been 19 airlines operating some 500 direct flights per week between Cambodia and China.

Khon said nearly half of the Chinese tourists to Cambodia have spent their time sightseeing the Angkor archeological park in Siem Reap province, as the rest visited coastal areas, Phnom Penh, and other tourist sites.

“Please continue to come to Cambodia,” he appealed. “Our country is full of peace and has so many tourist attractions, and our hospitality is good.”

Meanwhile, the minister said the Southeast Asian nation wanted to see more Chinese investment in building leisure resorts, luxury hotels, and tourism schools.

Ek Tha, a spokesman for the Phnom Penh-based Asian Cultural Council, said 2019 is a milestone year for culture and tourism relations between the two countries.

“Closer culture and tourism ties will bring closer contact and better understanding between the peoples of the two Asian countries,” he told Xinhua.

He said good cooperation in culture and tourism between the two nations should stand as a role model because culture plays a vital role in bridging friendship and diplomacy, as tourism plays a key role in attracting tourists and investors.

The former frontman believes long-term vision is required at Anfield, with Premier League rivals having shown how quickly success can unravel

Liverpool may have tied Jurgen Klopp to a new contract but the club needs to already be planning for the day the German departs, says Stan Collymore, with warnings to be taken from domestic rivals.

The Reds have positioned themselves at the top of domestic, European and global games under their German tactician.

Champions League and Club World Cup triumphs could be complemented by a Premier League title success in 2020.

Foundations are being put in place for a dynasty to be built, with Klopp having committed to terms at Anfield through to 2024.

Liverpool do, however, only need to look to the likes of Manchester United and Arsenal for examples of how empires can crumble when iconic figures such as Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger either depart or lose their way.

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Collymore believes those on Merseyside need to be drawing up contingency plans at this stage, with long-term thinking sitting alongside more immediate goals.

The former Reds striker told The Mirror: “I hope Liverpool owners FSG are looking at United and Arsenal and knowing that now is the time to make sure that when Klopp does go — and he will, one day — the club will continue to enjoy the same sort of success they are enjoying now.

“Because the only club I know for sure are doing that at the moment is Manchester City.

“If they got rid of Pep Guardiola right now and brought in a replacement with a similar philosophy, we already know those in positions of power at the Etihad will be making sure they have robust mechanisms in place to be able to roll with the punches in the way United and Arsenal did not.

“Football is like any other great industry in that, if you reach the top you have to work even harder to stay there because, if you don’t, you won’t stay there.

“Look at Tesco, the Co-op, Sainsbury’s… when all of those companies have been top of the tree and have taken their position for granted, a rival has come along and undercut them, made their supply chain better or introduced a different range to steal their thunder.

“Success can disappear far more quickly than it arrives.”

Liverpool have opened up a 13-point lead at the top of the Premier League table in 2019-20, while also reaching the last 16 of the Champions League and readying themselves for a derby date with neighbours Everton in the third round of the FA Cup.

The mercurial frontman is heading back to AC Milan, with a former San Siro team-mate considering him to be one of the greatest No.9s of all time

Only Brazil legend Ronaldo and Dutch icon Marco van Basten sit ahead of Zlatan Ibrahimovic when it comes to the “best No.9s of the last 30 years”, says the Swede’s former AC Milan team-mate Antonio Cassano.

A return to San Siro is being made by the mercurial frontman following the expiration of his contract at MLS side the LA Galaxy.

After much speculation regarding his next move, the 38-year-old has decided to head back to familiar surroundings as he returns to European football from an American adventure.

Cassano is convinced that Ibrahimovic can thrive back in Italy despite his advancing years.

The former Juventus and Inter frontman showed no sign of slowing down in the States and remains an impressive physical specimen who never has any problems when it comes to self belief.

Ibrahimovic has enjoyed a remarkable career at the very highest level, with trophies collected across spells in the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, France and England.

A standing among the all-time greats is already safely secured, with Cassano admitting there are few forwards who can claim to have got close to the enigmatic striker in recent times.

A man who once graced the same Milan side as Ibrahimovic told Sky Sport Italia: “I expected this return, as I always said that if he came back to Italy, it would be for Milan. He is very fond of the city and this club.

“After Ronaldo and Marco van Basten, I’d say Ibrahimovic is the best Number 9 of the last 30 years. He’s still phenomenal, despite his age.

“Zlatan makes his team-mates give 110 per cent and can still make the difference in Serie A. He’ll have to, because 80-85% of the current squad do not deserve to be at Milan.

“I am sure Ibra will get the best out of them, because if they don’t give 100% in every training session, he raises his voice. When he does that, you’d better be scared.

“I also have faith in Paolo Maldini and Zvonimir Boban, they deserve more patience. They’ve got Ibra now, there is talk of Jean-Clair Todibo from Barcelona, so I think Milan can get back to the top in two-three years.”

During a first spell with the Rossoneri between 2010 and 2012, Ibrahimovic recorded 56 goals in 85 appearances and added another Serie A title success to his collection.  

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The former Gunners striker will not “give up” on Mikel Arteta’s side, but accepts that a sorry slump has turned focus from collective to individuals

Finishing inside the Premier League’s top four is now a “fantasy” for Arsenal, says Charlie Nicholas, with attention switching from collective efforts and towards individuals such as Mesut Ozil and Nicolas Pepe.

A sorry slump for the Gunners, which has delivered one win across 15 games in all competitions, has left them languishing in 12th spot.

Mikel Arteta has taken the reins, with the Spaniard appointed as the permanent successor to fellow countryman Unai Emery.

He will have been fully aware of what he was getting himself into, with a serious rebuild required at the Emirates Stadium.

That is going to take time, with the 2019-20 campaign almost at the point of being written off.

Former Gunners striker Nicholas is reluctant to do that, but concedes that Champions League qualification spots have probably slipped out of sight.

With that in mind, the Scot is looking for Arteta to put foundations in place on which future success can be built, with key men such as Ozil and Pepe set to play important roles in that process.

Nicholas told Sky Sports: “I cannot give up on them, but Arsenal can’t buy a win at the moment, although it does seem more promising.

“There is more fight in there, no confidence, but there is a shape and a tendency to go and try to squeeze the ball.

“Mesut Ozil is playing better, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is still scoring goals and Bukayo Saka has been class at left-back despite being an attacker.

“You cannot plan for the Bernd Leno howler [in a 2-1 defeat to Chelsea], but the defence was better but still vulnerable, as were the midfield protectors.”

Nicholas added ahead of a New Year’s Day home date with Manchester United: “They need a win and it is not about closing the gap to the top four as that is fantasy for them this year.

“Mikel Arteta started with a draw and a harsh defeat so it is time for them to get a win.

“Man Utd will be very dangerous on the counter-attack, but Reiss Nelson has been decent, and Arteta could give Nicolas Pepe a start. He may just be ready to come and do something.”

Pepe has endured a testing start to life in England following a club-record £72 million ($95m) move to Arsenal over the summer, with just four goals recorded through 20 games.

Ozil has also faced plenty of questions regarding his value to the Gunners cause, but the World Cup winner did offer signs of encouragement against Chelsea and remains a match-winner on his day.

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The Spaniard believes his former teacher will switch the focus to continental football with the league now looking out of sight

Pep Guardiola will set Manchester City’s focus on winning the Champions League with Liverpool streaking away to claim the Premier League championship, according to Xavi.

City have played one more game than leaders Liverpool and trail by a whopping 14 points on the standings – a lead that looks insurmountable due to the Reds’ incredible form.

Xavi, who played under Guardiola during the tactician’s tenure at Barcelona between 2008-12, believes his former coach will now go out to win Europe’s premier club competition and will likely prioritise squad selection.

“Pep is a born winner,” Xavi said to the the Mirror.

“It will hurt him that Manchester City are so far behind Liverpool in the league – and he won’t give up.

“He will be realistic though. The gap is a big one and at the moment it doesn’t look likely that they can make it three titles in a row.

“With that in mind, I think there’s a big chance Pep will prioritise the Champions League.

“They will be two big games coming up against Real Madrid – and maybe there will be a chance to rest players before these games that they wouldn’t have if they were in a title race.

Manchester City were taken to the wire in their chase for a second consecutive Premier League title last season, as they gathered 98 points to just finish ahead of Liverpool by a solitary point.

However, Jurgen Klopp’s Reds managed to claim the Champions League trophy, an honour Pep hasn’t won since 2010-11 and a trophy Manchester City has never lifted.

Xavi feels that Guardiola’s team want to win the European trophy more than domestic honours and victory in the competition would elevate the stature of the club.

“Pep will want to win every trophy that he can – but if you’d asked him at the start of the season what he would prefer, I’m sure he would have said the Champions League.

“He joked with Klopp that maybe Manchester City and Liverpool should swap trophies this year – but there was some truth in that joke, I think.

“He’s won every trophy in England with Manchester City and he knows that winning the Champions League with them would take them to the next level as a club.”

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LONDON, Dec 27 (Reuters) ― World stocks scaled record highs on Friday and oil prices stayed buoyant in a holiday-shortened week, as optimism grew that a U.S.-China trade deal would soon be signed.

Traders returned from their Christmas and Boxing Day break to digest comments from Beijing that it was in close contact with Washington about an initial trade agreement. Earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump had talked up a signing ceremony for the recently struck phase-one trade deal.

U.S. stock indexes were set to open at fresh record highs on Friday as optimism over U.S.-China trade relations and an improving global economy brightened investor sentiment going into the new year.

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Futures for Canada’s main stock index rose on Friday, supported by higher oil prices. March futures on the S&P/TSX index were up 0.42 per cent at 7:00 a.m. ET.

The Toronto Stock Exchange’s TSX index ended 0.30 per cent higher at its previous, rising to 17,180.15 on Tuesday.

Rising to another record high, European shares were on course for their best year since the financial crisis. The pan-European STOXX 600 index was up 0.2 per cent, helped by gains in export-heavy German shares. The benchmark index has reached record highs for three sessions in a row.

Britain’s FTSE 100, set for its best run in three years, added 0.4 per cent. Mining companies provided the biggest boost, with Glencore Plc and BHP Group Plc climbing about 2 per cent each.

The positive tone was set in Asia. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan jumped 0.8 per cent to 555.39, a level not seen since mid-2018. It is up 15.5 per cent so far this year.

China’s blue-chip CSI300 was down 0.1 per cent, although for the week the index was up 0.1 per cent.

Profits at industrial companies in China in November grew at the fastest pace in eight months, breaking a three-month declining streak, as production and sales quickened. But broad weakness in domestic demand remains a risk for earnings next year, say analysts.

Not at all like last year

The rally in global shares contrasts with a plunge late last year, when the Sino-U.S. trade war had sapped investor confidence. The worries scuttled capital expenditure plans over much of 2019, but strong employment and signs of an improving global economy suggest that will change next year.

The U.S. Federal Reserve’s policy easing, economic data that have come in above expectations, and corporate profits have helped lift stocks this year, along with trade-related optimism. Markets are now waiting for January’s fourth-quarter financial results to see whether sentiment among companies has improved.

But some analysts are wary about risks ahead in 2020.

“The trade war … is far from over,” Piotr Matys, FX strategist at Rabobank, wrote in a research note. “In our view, this is just a temporary truce. Another unsolved major issue is Brexit. Geopolitical risk can suddenly resurface.”

― Additional reporting by Swati Pandey in Sydney; editing by Larry King; with files from Manas Mishra and Nidhi C Sai.

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