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Lululemon has overhauled its leadership in Greater China, elevating its longtime China head and tapping an LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton executive in a new role as it doubles down on growing in the market.

The Vancouver, Canada-based athleisure brand has promoted San Yan Ng, general manager of Lululemon’s China business for the last eight years, to the role of regional president of China and APAC, effective immediately. Simultaneously, the company revealed the hiring of Jeffrey Hang, who has joined as senior vice president and general manager of APAC — a new role for the company and also effective immediately.

Both hires come as Lululemon seeks to “strategically increase” market share and exert more “local relevance” across China and APAC, according to André Maestrini, interim co-chief executive officer, president, and chief commercial officer at Lululemon.

“China and the Asia-Pacific region represent some of the most dynamic consumer markets globally, and they are critical to Lululemon’s growth,” Maestrini said in a statement.

The appointments bring China and APAC under a shared leadership structure, which will enable the company to “better leverage market insights, scale capabilities, and continue delivering experiences that resonate with guests across diverse cultures and communities,” Lululemon added.

“I am honored to take on this new role and continue working with our talented teams across China and Asia-Pacific,” Hang said. “Each market in the region holds significant growth potential, with distinct guest needs, cultural backgrounds and market environments. We will leverage our teams’ strengths and remain relentlessly focused on our guests to create greater value for the company.

Both Ng and Hang come from luxury backgrounds. Ng spent 12 years at Loewe, rising to managing director of Asia-Pacific. She then joined Tory Burch as managing director and vice president of Asia retail and wholesale before joining Lululemon in 2018. Hang previously served as managing director for Bulgari across Southeast Asia, India, Australia and New Zealand. Prior to that, he was senior vice president and CEO of Louis Vuitton China.

Less crowded than Rome and Florence, Genoa has magnificent churches and palaces that are understated on the outside but extravagant on the inside

Genoa is attracting travelers again as the northwest Italian harbor city emerges from a postindustrial decline.

Twice a year during Rolli Days, dozens of Genoa’s historic palaces open their doors to the public, allowing visitors to view the interiors.

Genoa’s Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno serves as an open-air sculpture museum featuring thousands of marble scenes.

Genoa is once again a magnet for travelers.

A medieval rival to Venice and a financial capital of early modern Europe, this northwest Italian harbor city was a must-stop for 18th-century aristocrats on continental Europe’s Grand Tour. Now, as it emerges from a postindustrial decline, Genoa is again attracting tourists and with good reason: The city is full of surprises, with an eccentric charm that inspires exploration.

With its weird medieval alleyways, hilly setting and a transit system that might seem at home in an amusement park (think horizontal elevators and funiculars that tunnel through buildings), Genoa is Italy’s most exotic major city. But still awaiting a connection to the country’s main high-speed train corridor, it can feel like terra incognita, even to Italians.

Genoa’s magnificent churches—which typically have free admission, unlike churches in Florence and Venice—contain manifest treasures. And its culinary heritage, led by pasta al pesto alla Genovese and focaccia, may have gone viral in Italy and beyond, but taste far better here at home.

Even more splendors open up if you time your trip right. The palaces of Genoa’s 16th and 17th century golden age—which now have Unesco World Heritage status—can be hard to recognize from the outside. But twice a year during an event called Rolli Days, dozens of these discreet residences, along with stately villas and other historic buildings, open their doors to the public, allowing visitors to wander through the extravagant interiors. This fall, Rolli Days runs from Oct. 16 to Oct. 18.

You can soak up Genoa’s distinctive atmosphere at any time, however, by walking through its medieval historic center, marked by narrow streets called caruggi, which can be less than 3 feet wide. Too tight for a carriage, but spacious enough for the single-passenger sedan chairs carried by humans back in the day, they are now ideal for single-file strolling.

Italy’s sixth-largest city, with just under 600,000 inhabitants, Genoa is still a little gritty in stretches. But unlike Rome and Florence, many of its major attractions are nearly crowd-free, and smartphones will help you to find your way into and out of even the most cramped caruggi.

Here are some reasons to go to Genoa, and what to look out for when you do:

Terrain-defying transit system

The change in elevation from the waterfront at sea level to Genoa’s mountainous hinterland approaches 6,000 feet, and variations between adjoining neighborhoods can be as much as several hundred feet. Walking around may require navigating steep inclines or stairwell-like sidewalks, but over the past century the city has developed a unique transit system.

The Castello d’Albertis-Montegalletto line is called an elevator, or “ascensore,” but its small cabins are a combination of funicular, cable car and outdoor elevator that travel a vertical distance of around 250 feet. A roughly 10-minute trip—which, Willy Wonka-style, goes backward and forward, as well as up and down—will get you from the Piazza Principe train station to the fanciful D’Albertis Castle, the 19th-century home of a sea captain and now a museum. The view from the top takes in the whole of historic Genoa and its modern harbor complex.

Stellar art

Genoa’s peak in prestige, circa 1620, came when its patrician-merchant class, numbering a few dozen families, made the Genoese Republic the monetary masters of Spain’s overseas empire, turning the city into one of modern capitalism’s first financial hubs. These families became patrons to the most important artists of the day, such as Flemish painters Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, as well as Genoa’s own Baroque master Bernardo Strozzi.

Jonathan Bober, a former longtime curator at Washington’s National Gallery of Art and expert on Genoa, says some of the highlights here include Van Dyck’s elegant portraits of Genoese nobles from the 1620s in the Palazzo Rosso, an imposing palace that is now a museum, and Rubens’s dynamic, early 17th-century altarpiece in the Church of the Gesù.

Meanwhile, the 12th-century Church of San Luca, rebuilt in the 17th century by the Spinola family, is deceptively simple on the outside, and a whirlwind of Baroque decoration on the inside.

Extravagant palazzi

The great palaces of Genoa’s golden age are tucked away in caruggi or line the Strada Nuova, a 16th-century thoroughfare marked by elegant Renaissance facades that serve to disguise the ostentatious Baroque and Rococo trappings inside.

Palazzo Spinola Clavarino, a 16th-century palace on Strada Nuova (also known as Via Garibaldi), will open up its main residential floor for Rolli Days this fall; it got an opulent makeover in the past few years.

The contrast between restrained facades and secretive decoration gets to the heart of the Genoese mentality, says Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano, who divides his time between his native Genoa and Paris.

A killer cemetery

While Genoa’s noble families splurged on their palaces during the Renaissance and the Baroque eras, the city’s rising middle class of shipbuilders, traders and professionals splurged on their tombstones in the 19th century in the Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno.

The hilltop cemetery may be a resting place for multitudes, but it’s also a seemingly endless open-air sculpture museum. Local artists, with easy access to Carrara marble quarried just down the coast, created thousands of sculpted scenes that by turns commemorate, re-create or just refer to the dead in towering dioramas.

In a realistic 1870s monument for a member of the Piaggio family, a dead man’s widow, shown leaving the door of a tomb, is wearing an elaborate lace shawl and mourning through her sculpted eyelashes. In an 1880s Symbolist monument for a member of the Carpaneto family, an angelic helmsman is shown steering away the departed in an impressive boat.

In a nod to Rolli Days, the city has recently launched Staglieno Days, which will take place on Sept. 26 and 27, featuring themed tours, concerts and pageant-like performances.

Humble, enriching food

Marked by frugal ingredients and a number of vegetarian main courses, Genoese food at its best seems simple but tastes complex.

Pesto is made here with basil, extra virgin olive oil, pine nuts, garlic and grated cheese, all ground to a thick paste. Locals eat it with trenette pasta, a linguine-like dried noodle, or trofie, an eggless fresh pasta, along with a few green beans and a bit of potato, and then thinned out with water until all turns a bright, evocative green.

Local food writer Enrica Monzani says that pesto, which might pass for upscale or gourmet dining elsewhere, was originally “a peasant trick to increase portions without spending too much money.” What makes it so extraordinary here is the local basil, which is harvested at its peak (to inhibit any bitterness,) and Ligurian olive oil, which tends to be buttery rather than biting.

Focaccia has become de facto sandwich bread or makeshift pizza crust elsewhere in Italy, but it tends to be bare bones in Genoa, where it has been made since the Middle Ages. Here, it’s a salty, oily, typically plain bread that must be eaten within a few hours of baking, and that locals relish in the morning, dipped in cappuccino. “The saltiness of the focaccia combines with the bittersweetness of cappuccino,” says Monzani, and “the experience is amazing.”

For more-unusual fare, Monzani recommends the local polpettone. Elsewhere in Italy that means meatloaf; in cost-conscious Genoa, it means a combination of boiled green beans and potatoes, ground down and combined with cheese, eggs and fresh herbs, and then baked. The result is something between an aromatic fritter and a funky soufflé.

Touches of extravagance

Genoa does occasionally like to show off. Pànera, the local alternative to gelato, is a rich, cream-spiked, coffee-flavored semifreddo.

The waterfront Galata Maritime Museum, meanwhile, has fascinating displays about favorite son Christopher Columbus, who was thought to have been born here in 1451, and a jaw-dropping reconstruction of a galley ship, once the building block of the Genoese Republic’s power and prestige.

There also is the spectacular Aquarium of Genoa, with 400 species of animals, where the standard admission price tops up at 38 euros (about $43)—or about the price of a month’s supply of breakfast focaccia.

Bonta also wants Paramount to commit to keeping its movie studio separate from Warner Bros.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta is expected to ask Paramount PSKY 0.58%increase; up pointing triangle to divest some cable channels and commit to keeping its movie studio separate from Warner Bros. before he signs off on the $81 billion merger, people familiar with the matter said.

Bonta and Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison are scheduled to meet Monday to discuss potential ways to settle the antitrust lawsuit California and 11 other states filed last month to block a deal that would combine the two entertainment giants.

Lawyers from both sides met Friday, according to people familiar with the matter. The purpose of that gathering was to lay out an agenda for Monday’s meeting, including discussions about the cable and motion-picture business, one of the people familiar with the matter said.

The lawsuit filed by the states’ attorneys general argued that the merger would create too much concentration in the markets for theatrical movies and cable TV channels. Other areas of concern include film and television production and employment.

Pressure has mounted for Bonta and Ellison to reach an accord to allow the merger to proceed. In recent days, both California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass have urged the two sides to find common ground.

Ellison and Paramount face significant financial costs if the deal isn’t closed soon. The deal with Warner includes a “ticking fee” with payments to Warner shareholders of roughly $650 million a quarter starting Oct. 1 and lasting until the transaction closes. If the trial goes on as scheduled, Paramount could be responsible for more than $1 billion in such fees.

Paramount has indicated it is prepared to leave California if it can’t reach an agreement with Bonta and the other states before the ticking fee goes into effect. Tennessee is the company’s first choice for a new home, people familiar with the company’s thinking have said.

Bonta has been adamant that he will fight the deal in court unless Paramount agrees to structural remedies. Paramount has committed to making 30 theatrical releases a year when the deal closes but hasn’t shown a willingness to sell assets or agree to management structures that would limit potential cost-savings and synergies.

People close to the talks between the two sides are doubtful significant ground will be made Monday.

A sale or spinoff of even a handful of cable networks could hurt Paramount’s bottom line and make it harder to service the nearly $80 billion in debt it will be carrying once the deal closes. While the cable-network business is struggling with cord-cutting and declining ad revenue, the channels still generate significant cash.

Bonta also wants Warner Bros.’ movie studio to remain a stand-alone operation with little interference from Ellison, people familiar with the matter said. Taking a hands-off approach to Warner Bros. is a nonstarter for Ellison, a person familiar with his thinking said.

The Paramount-Warner deal was approved by the Justice Department in June. It has also received approvals from the European Union, U.K., China and dozens of other countries.

Greater access to satellite systems means the continent can now utilise more data than ever

As a boy in rural Senegal, the closest that Gayane Faye could get to the stars was wandering beneath them with his family flocks or watching rockets being launched on TV.

Since then he has helped Senegal into space, one of a growing number of pioneering African scientists looking to the heavens to solve their countries’ problems on Earth.

Almost 20 African countries have satellites in orbit, with several more setting up budding space programmes.

This year, African nations will collectively spend more than $800mn on space projects, almost double what they were spending two years ago. The African Union even set up the African Space Agency last year to improve co-ordination and share best practices.

The continent was bypassed in the early years of the space race in the 20th century, but it is now betting that satellites will be able to collect reams of data on everything from weather and wars to crops and cattle. This will be invaluable in helping information-starved governments understand the countries they run.

It helps that much of the kit the continent needs no longer has to be cutting-edge and is increasingly affordable. Using launch companies abroad, Botswana and Uganda have sent satellites to scour soils for minerals and warn of droughts and wildfires. Angola is using a communications satellite to connect scattered villages across its vast interior while the arid country of Djibouti is now monitoring its water levels from space. 

This means that scientists no longer need to waste time and money travelling to scattered sensors to download data, while demographers, agronomists, urban planners and meteorologists will have access to far more information, helping them to save lives and strengthen infrastructure by identifying flood-prone areas, for example. 

“They want sovereign access to data,” said Temidayo Oniosun, an analyst who runs the consultancy Space in Africa. He says that buying high-quality satellite imagery from the handful of mainly western corporations that have cornered the market can be extremely expensive and that requests from countries under sanction by the US or the EU can be turned down entirely.

Some nations have come far in only a few years. Senegal, which sent up its first satellite two years ago to relay environmental data, with three more in the works, has decided to go all-in. “It is above all an economic question,” said Faye, who has led the Senegalese satellite effort.

The first satellite, GaindeSat-1A, cost roughly $1mn to build — a figure that includes the first-time costs of setting up the equipment for a fully functional space station. By the time Faye builds the fourth satellite in the constellation, he expects the cost per satellite to be one-tenth of that.

He is putting together a proposal for a constellation of between six and 12 satellites equipped with cameras — a project that would benefit more than 70 institutions in Senegal alone that rely on blurry pictures provided free-of-charge that are often useless.

Faye argues that with better imagery, even tasks as simple as estimating how much food will be produced every season can be dramatically improved because it will be possible to track farmers’ fields and herds from above. 

There are technical reasons why Africa has begun to catch up. It is easier than ever for scientists to learn to build and operate satellites. Nanosatellites, which are smaller and cheaper than more sophisticated satellites, offer a simpler gateway to experiment and develop skills without breaking the bank or risking the destruction of a multimillion-dollar project with a misplaced screw. They cost as little as $50,000, and weigh less than a bag of flour.

“You can make mistakes with them and it is OK,” said Taiwo Tejumola, a Nigerian satellite engineer. He trained in Japan and says smaller satellites provide a straightforward way for more advanced countries to pass along knowledge to those eager to learn. “They are a very good first step to build space capabilities,” he added.

This is how cash-strapped Senegal took its orbital baby steps. It sent engineers and technicians to the University of Montpellier, where they built their first satellite with the coaching and technology provided by French engineers. Now, they are building the second without hands-on coaching. Faye said the third will be assembled in Senegal and the technology on the fourth will be fully homegrown.

But lurking behind every starry-eyed scientist are harder political questions. China, which has specialised in building more sophisticated satellites and ground infrastructure, has been busy offering assistance. Europe, Russia and Japan have also been jostling with offers of technical training, technological assistance and other means of co-operation.

“There is geopolitics involved at every level,” said Julie Klinger at the University of Wisconsin, adding that African countries have tended to go with whichever of their many suitors can offer them the best package. “It is a very competitive marketplace,” she said. “There is a sense that they do not have to go with the first offer.” 

It is often case-by-case. China offers competitive rates when building or selling satellites and infrastructure. It certainly helps that it is willing to provide low-interest loans as sweeteners. France and Japan have research institutions, such as the International Space University in Strasbourg and the Kyushu Institute of Technology, which have historically been among the first ports-of-call for satellite-curious scientists.

Geography enhances Africa’s strategic significance too. For example, South Africa’s location at the tip of the southern hemisphere has made it particularly valuable for supporting polar-orbiting satellites launched from other countries. Djibouti has turned itself into a prime rocket launch site. Europe keeps tabs on its launches from French Guiana in South America from a ground station across the Atlantic in Gabon. China has installations in Kenya and Namibia which the Americans claim are critical nodes for managing military satellites.

It’s unlikely that the momentum will slow. Some African countries, for example Malawi, have even set up space programmes without any public plans to go into orbit. “You don’t want to be left alone,” said Oniosun, who points out that it makes sense to centralise expertise.

Africa still has far to go before it catches up with the rest of the world. But the only way is up. “We are allowed to dream,” said Faye, when asked whether Senegal could eventually put a man in space. He quickly checked himself: “We are very ambitious, but we try to keep our ambition measured.”