The Guardian: US anti-extremism group asks Israel to curb rightwing Jewish activist

A US-based organisation that campaigns against antisemitism has taken the unusual step of calling on the Israeli government to act against an extreme rightwing Jewish activist with “abusive, racist, inflammatory and violent” opinions. [...]

Both the ADL and the IRAC say Gopstein and Lehava have encouraged “price tag” attacks on Palestinians and their property in response to moves by the Israeli authorities which the perpetrators view as hostile to settlers. [...]

In April, Gopstein was acquitted of assaulting two leftwing activists after a judge said he could have mistaken them for Palestinians.

Lehava was launched in 2009 with the aim of preventing relationships between Jewish women and Arab men.

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The Guardian: The rise of vegan teenagers: 'More people are into it because of Instagram'

Veganism is on the rise. In 2006, 150,000 people in the UK opted for a plant-based diet. Today, 542,000 do. That’s a 350% increase.

The movement is driven by the young – close to half of all vegans are aged 15-34 (42%), compared with just 14% who are over 65. When the Guardian asked people about being vegan, 67% of the 474 who replied were under 34, and more than one-sixth were teenagers. We heard from people as young as 14 espousing the purported virtues of quitting meat and dairy. [...]

So why are so many teens ditching meat and dairy? Here’s what they said.

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The Guardian: Scotland has taken in more than a third of all UK's Syrian refugees

Scotland has welcomed more Syrian refugees than any other part of the UK since David Cameron said Britain would resettle 20,000 people, while only 33 people have been accepted by London local authorities, figures show. [...]

No refugees were accepted by the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, in which the constituency of the home secretary, Theresa May, is located, or by Watford borough council, home to the constituency of the Home Office minister responsible for resettling refugees, Richard Harrington. [...]

The Guardian has been trying since September to gain access to the figures. The Home Office refused a freedom of information (FoI) request asking to be told which local authorities had accepted Syrians on the VPR. Officials decided the information was exempt from disclosure under section(s) 36(2)c of the Freedom of Information Act. This provides that information can be withheld “where disclosure would otherwise prejudice, or would be likely otherwise to prejudice, the effective conduct of public affairs”.

AdvertisementThe Guardian had challenged the refusal but had yet to hear back when the government released the information. The release came after the home affairs select committee submitted its own FoI asking for the statistics. After the Home Office missed a 20-day deadline to respond, the information commissioner’s office ordered it to release the information as soon as possible.

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The Guardian: Swapping spit: what saliva can reveal about your romantic relationship

Instant Chemistry works like so: you and your partner sign up to receive a “relationship kit” containing two saliva receptacles, which you spit into and send back to the company. Instant Chemistry then extracts certain genetic information from the samples and, based on what they term “bio- and neuro-compatibility”, score how compatible you are. Seabrooke and Gonzalez, for example, ring in at a cool 86%. [...]

If you think this sounds bananas, you’re not alone. I emailed a few geneticists for commentary on the veracity of Instant Chemistry’s science, and received the following response: “I spent three minutes reading what this company is offering, and my impression is it is total delusion. I really cannot waste more time on this.” But Seabrooke and Gonzalez aren’t hacks – they met as medical students studying neuroscience and genetics. They were both fascinated by the science of compatibility and spent years trying to figure out why some people work well together, and other just don’t.

After you take Instant Chemistry’s test, you and your partner will receive a booklet explaining the findings. You’ll learn how likely it is that you and your partner will remain physically attracted to each other over time and you’ll get feedback from the resident good doctors on how to be a better listener. The total cost for the test and subsequent “love manual” is $199.

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The Atlantic: What Is It Like When the President Becomes a Surrogate?

In fact, a case in which a president could campaign for his successor is extremely rare. There haven’t been that many two-term presidents over the last century, and they have tended to be so unpopular as to not be much use. What makes Obama unusual is that his popularity is relatively high, and on the rise. 

The 1988 election was one such case. President Ronald Reagan did campaign for Vice President George W. Bush, vouching for him with key groups. But it was a complicated relationship: Bush was eager to show that he could get out from under Reagan’s wing and prove he was not a wimp. Reagan was somewhat tarnished by the Iran-Contra scandal, and the Gipper was already aged and likely suffering from symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Meanwhile, Reagan—like Obama with his former secretary of state this year—waited until well into the spring to formally endorse his former VP, rather than meddle in the GOP primary.

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Los Angeles Times: Undercover police stings targeting gay men endure, despite fierce criticism

Undercover officers, critics contend, often exchange flirtatious signals and make arrests of men who think their advances are welcome, when no one else is nearby to be offended. They say that the stings can ensnare men who hadn't otherwise been seeking sex and that they rarely, if ever, target straight people. 

Under state law, people who are convicted of indecent exposure must register as sex offenders and face possible jail time. Some have lost their jobs or committed suicide. [...]

Courts also have raised questions about the stings, invalidating a number of prosecutions in various parts of the state. In some cases, judges found no crime had occurred because the undercover officer conveyed sexual interest to the target and no one else was present to be offended by the lewd conduct. Last month, a Los Angeles County judge threw out the charges in one case stemming from Long Beach's 2014 operation, saying police were discriminating against gay men.

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The Guardian: ‘I don’t want to go back with nothing’: the Brexit threat to Spain’s little Britain

The newcomers have got the hang of one Spanish cliche all right: mañana. But now their situation is starting to hit home – not because Spain does not want them, but because their compatriots could make their situation untenable. The referendum is creating great concern, some alarm, and in one or two cases near-panic. If Britain votes to leave, these Britons will very likely have to leave too, physically as well as politically. If Orihuela Costa were in the UK, its demographics – elderly, white, C1/C2s with a taste for bowls and golf – would make it a prime target for Ukip. Here the thinking is spectacularly different. [...]

The statistics are flaky, but the area is thought to have 50,000 dwellings, far more than the city itself. Nearly half of these would be holiday homes or buy-to-lets. The most authoritative estimate is that 30,000 people actually live along this 10-mile stretch of coast, of whom 80% are non-Spanish. And of those, perhaps two-thirds are British or Irish. [...]

But the majority were very aware where their interests lie. The glories of Spanish healthcare were often mentioned. Some talked about the fear that their UK pensions would be frozen (as is now normal for those living outside the EU) and that they would lose out on annual increases. Others touched on the most likely, most terrifying and most immediate double-whammy they would face: if Britain votes to leave, the pound will go down, making Spain more expensive, but British demand for their houses will disappear, making them effectively unsaleable.

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The Huffington Post: Austria Is Just the Beginning of a More Polarized World

The fight for democracy itself is also being led from the right by the likes of Hofer, Trump and Le Pen in France. They argue for the purification of democracy from the evils being inflicted on it by certain minority groups. For them, democracy is the rule of the majority over the minority. Liberal democracies, on the other hand, as they have taken shape in the countries of the West, inversely derive their value, their functionality and their legitimacy by how well they treat minorities. [...]

Austria is a small country and, on today’s global political stage, insignificant — though anyone visiting Vienna immediately notices that it was once the seat of a great empire. This applies similarly to Paris and London. A return to former greatness, a mission evoked by Trump in the U.S., can be heard also in France, England and Austria with similar rhetorical fashion.

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The Guardian: World's scariest school run? Chinese children tackle 800m cliff to get to lessons

To attend class, backpack-carrying pupils from Atuler village in Sichuan province must take on an 800m rock face, scrambling down rickety ladders and clawing their way over bare rocks as they go.

Images of their terrifying and potentially deadly 90-minute descent went viral on the Chinese internet this week after they were published in a Beijing newspaper. [...]

But the perils were evident. Api Jiti told the Beijing News that “seven or eight” villagers had plunged to their deaths after losing their grip during the climb while many more had been injured.

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