Names and faces
■ After a year off school to campaign for tougher action on curbing climate change, Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg says she’s returning to class. “My gap year from school is over, and it feels so great to finally be back in school again!” the 17-year-old said Monday on Instagram next to a photo of herself with a schoolbag on her back and her hands resting on bicycle handles. In Sweden, high school-level classes are returning this week. It wasn’t clear which school Thunberg was attending. The teenager shot to fame after starting her solo protests outside Sweden’s parliament in Stockholm two years ago on Aug. 20, 2018. Students around the world soon began following her lead, staging regular large protests, and Thunberg was invited to speak to political and business leaders at U.N. conferences and the annual World Economic Forum in Davos. Last week, she and other young activists held talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel regarding the climate. But the coronavirus outbreak has prevented the Fridays for Future movement that Thunberg inspired from holding its mass rallies in recent months, dampening its public profile. Thunberg was named Time magazine’s youngest Person of the Year, and was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, which she didn’t get.
■ Rivals in life, the rappers Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur are being united for an auction at Sotheby’s, the first-ever dedicated hip-hop auction at a major international auction house. Bidders will be able to vie for the crown worn and signed by Notorious B.I.G. in a 1997 photo shoot held three days before he was killed in Los Angeles. They’ll also get to bid on an archive of 22 autographed love letters written by Shakur at the age of 15-17 to a high school sweetheart. Onetime friends who became rivals in a hype-fueled war between the East and West Coast rap scenes, Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. — also known as Biggie Smalls — were gunned down within months of each other. Both crimes remain unsolved. The auction will be held Sept. 15 and features more than 120 hip-hop-related lots. The items can be viewed in person at Sotheby’s in New York and the exhibition will be available to the public online in its digital gallery. “The impact of hip-hop is everywhere — sneakers, clothing, jewelry, art, music. I wanted to have a sale that really recognized how massive that impact really is,” said Cassandra Hatton, the Sotheby’s senior specialist who organized the sale. The estimates for the headlining lots — $200,000 to $300,000 for the crown and $60,000 to $80,000 for the letters — are low, with the hope that the auction house can attract first-time bidders and show it is not just a stuffy place for multimillion-dollar watches and paintings.