The Washington Post: How this woman became Germany’s first Muslim parliamentary president

When Muhterem Aras became the first Muslim house speaker of one of Germany's federal parliaments in May, the time could not have been more sensitive. The country had just welcomed more than 1 million refugees in 2015 — many of them Muslims. For months, tensions had risen between supporters and opponents of refugees. [...]

Parliamentary presidents' words carry particular weight because of their significance for bridging the divides between various parties. The office could enable Aras to become a significant counterweight to the Alternative for Germany, an anti-foreigner party which has double-digit approval ratings in the polls at the moment. In an interview with WorldViews, Aras discussed her election as well as how the country should respond to the current refugee crisis.

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The Guardian: Frauke Petry: the acceptable face of Germany’s new right?

But any attempts she makes to dismiss the far-right labels might seem hollow after the party’s recent announcement of a European alliance with the FPÖ. “True, our meeting with the FPÖ could be seen as moving the party to the right, but on the other hand the FPÖ is something you just cannot ignore from a German point of view because it’s so near in terms of language and political structure – it would be stupid not to talk to each other. We found similar characteristics with other parties, whether the Danish People’s party, the Swiss People’s party, the Sweden Democrats, the True Finns, also the Front National,” she says. [...]

Now that new arrivals have largely ceased – due to the closure of the Balkans route, the erection of fences and sealing of borders around Europe – the AfD has markedly shifted its campaign agenda to one of stopping the “Islamification” of Germany. [...]

Newspapers widely reported that Petry had advocated firing on refugees. Even the party’s unofficial organ, Compact, said Petry had not tried to withdraw the statement “perhaps because she recognises that 25% of Germans are in favour of deploying firearms, even on unarmed refugees”. For two days she failed to respond to her critics. Deputy AfD head and MEP Beatrix von Storch then added fuel to the fire by answering “yes” to a question on Facebook as to whether firearms should be used against women and children trying to cross the German border. [...]

The party’s relationship with the Dresden-based hardline protest movement Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West), which thinks nothing of demonstrating with mock-up models of Merkel in a noose, has come under much scrutiny, with the AfD often referred to as the group’s political arm, “which it never was,” Petry swiftly insists. But the overlaps are undeniable. Not only are the complaints of Pegida and AfD supporters very similar (everything from anti-Muslim sentiments to opposition to Russian sanctions, and even to Germany’s high television licence fee), many at the demonstrations who are often disillusioned Christian Democrats, desperately negative in their outlook, call the AfD their natural home.

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National Public Radio: A New Opera Illuminates The 'Lavender Scare,' A Little-Explored Era In Queer History

In the 1950s, as members of Congress were rooting out suspected communists in government and Hollywood, they broadened their search to include homosexuals and lesbians, under the theory that closeted gays could be more easily blackmailed into revealing government secrets. That crusade, dubbed the "lavender scare," is at the center of Fellow Travelers, a new stage production that received its world premiere last night at Cincinnati Opera. [...]

During the McCarthy era, anything connected with homosexuality could lead to scandal. Mallon points to the example of Lester Hunt, a real-life senator from Wyoming who committed suicide in his office after the arrest of his son for allegedly soliciting gay sex in Lafayette Square. (Author Alan Drury took pieces of the Lester Hunt story and used them in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Advise and Consent.) [...]

The consequences of being found out were real. Thousands of people lost their jobs, and restrictions on hiring gays in government remained in place into the 1990s. Jamie Shoemaker, a linguist with the National Security Administration, says his record was spotless when, one day, he was called to a meeting.

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Business Insider: The history of money: A brief look at American currency

Many people today don’t often use coins or paper money anymore, preferring instead the convenience of a credit card, debit card, or even a smartphone. But the history of currency in the United States is actually (surprisingly) very fascinating.

For example, did you know that there were redbacks before there were greenbacks? And that after the Revolutionary War our currency was so worthless that the phrase “not worth a Continental” was a regular part of everyday language?

But beyond these interesting tidbits, the evolution of American currency helps to frame the history of finance in the United States, as our rapidly expanding nation struggled, failed, and ultimately succeeded in creating a reliable monetary and banking system. Creating trust in paper notes has been an enduring theme in the history of American finance, banking, and currency.

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The Guardian: Russian hooligans 'had Kremlin links'

Senior government officials fear the violence unleashed by Russian hooligans at Euro 2016 was sanctioned by the Kremlin and are investigating links with Vladimir Putin’s regime.

It is understood that a significant number of those involved in savage and highly coordinated attacks on England fans and others in Marseille and Lille have been identified as being in the “uniformed services” in Russia. [...]

A notorious leader of a Russian supporters’ group, Alexander Shprygin, was expelled from France after he was stopped on a bus travelling to Lille from the south of France after the trouble. He was among 43 fans detained. Shprygin, who was accompanying the official Russian delegation at the championships, was pictured alongside Putin at a football fan’s funeral in 2010.

Moscow has denounced the detaining of Russian fans and accused the French authorities’ actions as “further stoking of anti-Russian sentiments”.

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AP: Questions rise over Bangladesh jailing 11,600 in crackdown

Within six days of announcing a crackdown on Islamist militants, Bangladesh had filled its jailhouses with 11,600 new detainees in what seemed like an astonishing display of law enforcement might. The problem is, less than 2 percent of those picked up are suspected radicals, and not one is considered to be a high-level operative.

The rest? Most are accused of petty crimes such as theft, burglary or small-time drug smuggling. At least 2,000 are members of the main opposition party, according to its spokesman, while others were believed to belong to a key ally of that party. [...]

Hasina announced the crackdown last week, after the wife of a police superintendent was shot and stabbed to death. The victim had been an ardent campaigner against militants, and many within the country's establishment were stunned by the attack on someone they had considered as one of their own.

Yet police now say the crackdown was never meant to target only radicals, but was also aimed at arresting people accused of trading in narcotics and firearms. While that "special drive" was carried out in tandem with the anti-militancy campaign, it was never communicated to the media until it was over, police spokesman Kamrul Ahsan said.

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The Times of Israel: In Israeli desert, world’s highest solar tower looks to future

Once completed in late 2017, the Ashalim Tower will rise to 240 meters (787 feet), taller than Paris’s Montparnasse Tower and London’s Gherkin, according to the Israeli government and the consortium building it. [...]

A field of mirrors covering 300 hectares (740 acres) — the size of more than 400 football pitches — will stretch out from its base, directing sunlight toward the tower’s peak to an area called the boiler, which looks like a giant lightbulb.

The boiler, whose temperature will rise to 600 degrees Celsius (1112 Fahrenheit), generates steam that is channeled towards the foot of the tower, where electricity is produced.

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