Washington Times: Pope Francis moving to revise catechism to absolutely forbid death penalty: report

Pope Francis, who personally opposes capital punishment in any instance, has taken steps to change the Catechism of the Catholic Church’s teaching on the death penalty, likely leading to an absolute prohibition on capital punishment in Church teaching, America magazine reported Thursday. [...]

“Nowadays the death penalty is unacceptable, however grave the crime of the convicted person,” Pope Francis said, insisting that capital punishment “contradicts God’s plan for individuals and society, and his merciful justice.”

read the article 

VICE: The Big Business of Mass Shootings

As most of you have probably realized—and as this week's congressional inactivity confirmed—the fight over gun control in the United States is not one that rational voices on either side can win. Like so much in American politics, the debate is governed by emotions. And when it comes to guns, those emotions are usually (perhaps exclusively) anger and fear—of minorities and Muslims; of violent crime, of ISIS or any other bogeyman du jour; of a "weapons culture" liberals disagree with; and of the politicians who conservatives claim are "coming for our guns."

Incidentally, fear and anger also generate a lot of revenue—upwards of $16 billion, in fact, for guns and ammunitions manufacturers in 2015 alone. That was a big year for gun sales, with the FBI recording 23 million background checks, the highest number ever—although it looks like the US may break that record in 2016. Gun manufacturing has similarly ballooned, with US firearms makers producing nearly 11 million guns, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. [...]

In turn, the NRA blocks any and all gun control legislation that comes up before Congress; in 2015 alone, the group spent more than $37 million to oppose new gun laws, and prop up sympathetic legislators who would back their agenda. Because fewer rules means more money, for both gun makers and their lobbyists. In 2014, the NRA took in a whopping $310 million in revenue, according to IRS tax filings; its chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, took home a cool $1 million.

read the article 

CNN: The surprising history of abortion in the United States

In the 18th century and until about 1880, abortions were allowed under common law and widely practiced. They were illegal only after "quickening," the highly subjective term used to describe when pregnant women could feel the fetus moving, Reagan said.

"At conception and the earliest stage of pregnancy, before quickening, no one believed that a human life existed; not even the Catholic Church took this view," Reagan wrote. "Rather, the popular ethic regarding abortion and common law were grounded in the female experience of their own bodies."

Abortions would become criminalized by 1880, except when necessary to save a woman's life, not at the urging of social or religious conservatives but under pressure from the medical establishment -- and the very organization that today speaks out in support of abortion access, Reagan explained. [...]

Back when it was still a fledgling organization, however, it began a crusade in 1857 to make abortion illegal, Reagan wrote. The impetus was manifold. Some of it came "out of regular physicians' desire to win professional power, control medical practice, and restrict their competitors," namely midwives and homeopaths.

read the article 

Vox: 3 winners and 4.5 million losers from the Supreme Court’s immigration deadlock

But it was a damn influential sentence. The Supreme Court’s split effectively kills President Obama’s 2014 proposals to allow 4.5 million immigrants to apply for protection from deportation and work permits. It vindicates Senate Republicans’ strategy of holding the court at eight members after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. And it raises the stakes of the presidential election in November. [...]

In the long run, they may have rendered the federal government even more dysfunctional by further eroding one of the most important remaining Senate norms. Even in the medium run, they may have chosen poorly: Senate Republicans might not like the justices a President Donald Trump would nominate — and if the 2016 race continues as it has, they’ll never get the chance to find out anyway. [...]

If Democrats had to have a setback in this Supreme Court term to dramatize the stakes of the election, this was certainly the one that might do the most to mobilize key voters. Millions of Latino voters know unauthorized immigrants; in some cases, eligible voters are the siblings or children of immigrants who would have qualified for Obama’s abortive immigration programs.

read the article

Los Angeles Times: FBI investigators say they have found no evidence that Orlando shooter had gay lovers

In seeking to verify the reports, federal agents have culled Mateen's electronic devices, including a laptop computer and cellphone, as well as electronic communications of those who made the claims, law enforcement officials said.

So far, they have found no photographs, no text messages, no smartphone apps, no gay pornography and no cell-tower location data to suggest that Mateen — who was twice married to women and had a young son — conducted a secret gay life, the officials said. [...]

It is possible that Mateen might have had communications on cellphones or other electronic equipment that have not been recovered by investigators in the wake of the shooting. [...]

Cedeno said he did not contact police to tell them about his contact with Mateen, because some of his friends who did had their phones taken and were told not to talk to reporters. He said he doesn’t trust the FBI to investigate Mateen, given they questioned him in 2013 and again in 2014, placed him on a terrorist watch list but then removed him from the list.

read the article 

The Washington Post: A new algorithm could predict ISIS attacks

The study, published last week by the journal Science, identifies hardcore pro-Islamic State groups on social media by searching for key words, such as mentions of beheadings, and zeroing in on specific community pages and groups. These groups trade operational information, such as which drone is being used in an attack or how to avoid detection, as well as fundraising posts and extremist ideology.

An uptick in the creation of these groups correlated with terrorist attacks, the study found. When the team used the model they created on their set of data, they found that the model correctly predicted the Kobani attack they observed in 2014. [...]

"The data suggests that there's no such thing as a 'lone wolf' in that sense," Johnson said. "If an individual looks alone, the chance is that they will at some stage in the recent path have been in an aggregate. And if you look long enough, they will be in another aggregate soon." [...]

The study is not without its skeptics. "This is a potentially valuable approach, and more research should be done on the approach,” said J.M. Berger, a fellow in George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, told the New York Times. “But to jump ahead to the utility of it, I think, takes more work.”

read the article 

Vox: More Americans support same-sex marriage, but they’re still freaked out by two men kissing.

Mateen’s hostility toward seeing two men show affection played out in an extreme way, but in the US, it’s emblematic of a barrier the LGBTQ community faces. Even with support for marriage equality reaching record highs at 55 percent, there’s still an “ick” factor that comes when seeing two people — specifically, two men — show affection.

A study published in the American Sociological Review in 2014 showed heterosexual people are willing to support formal rights for same-sex couples, such as inheritance rights, hospital visitation access, and marriage equality. But when it comes to seeing same-sex couples kiss and hold hands in public, straight men (and to a lesser extent, straight women) think LGBTQ people should curb the public display of affection. [...]

Still, it’s not just straight people who balk when two men show their love. Gay male participants in the study were “significantly less approving of the gay couple kissing on the cheek and French kissing, compared to the heterosexual couple” doing the same things in public, the journal article reads.

read the article 

The Huffington Post: Berlin Is The Latest City To Pull Out Of Fossil Fuels

The new investment policy, part of the German capital’s goal of completely weaning off carbon by 2050, will force the city’s pension fund — worth $852.8 million, or €750 million — to divest from shares of German oil giants RWE and E.ON, as well as the French behemoth Total.

The move comes a week after Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, vowed to end its investments in fossil fuels companies, making Berlin the seventh major Western city to join a divestment movement that already includes Paris, Copenhagen, Oslo, Seattle, Portland and Melbourne. In September, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio urged the city’s five pension funds — worth a collective $160 billion — to sell their $33 million exposure to coal, by the far the dirtiest fossil fuel. [...]

“Berlin’s decision to blacklist fossil fuel companies is the latest victory for the divestment movement, which serves to remove the social license from companies whose business model pushes us into climate catastrophe,” Christoph Meyer, a campaigner with environmental nonprofit 350.org’s Fossil Free Berlin project, said in a statement. “We will keep a close eye on the administration to make sure it upholds today’s commitment and urge the city to now take quick steps to break its reliance on coal power.”

read the article 

The Guardian: In or out of the EU, London and other British cities need more control

Were the prospect of a national government led by Boris Johnson and leaned on by Nigel Farage not blood-chilling enough, the referendum campaign produced opinion poll outcomes to freeze the bones. I don’t mean those underlining how misinformed voters are about EU migration or the reach of EU law, perturbing though they were. I mean the one that found that 46% of those wanting to leave the EU thought the authorities would probably rig the result of Thursday’s vote, and that more than a quarter of them believed MI5 would be involved in the fix. [...]

Whatever else stems from the referendum ballot, the need to rebuild faith in political institutions has been starkly reconfirmed. Faith flows from confidence that the processes and servants of democracy are honest, accessible, transparent and able to get things done. Can devolving power to cities and their surrounding regions and putting it in the hands of highly visible, directly-elected mayors help to improve that flow? [...]

Though dismayed by the insular Vote Leave mentality, Barber thinks he knows why people succumb to it. “The nation state is too large for meaningful participation of citizens,” he told Prospect magazine three years ago. As for the EU: “Citizens simply don’t feel that it is about citizenship. It’s about the euro, maybe about economics or trade, but it’s not about democracy.” And, at the same time: “It’s too small, too limited and territorial to be able to encompass the global scale of the challenges we face.”

read the article 

BBC: EU referendum: The result in maps

The Leave campaign triumphed right across England and Wales, winning in large northern cities including Sheffield, the Welsh valleys, across the Midlands including Birmingham, and the south and east of England.

see the maps

The Guardian: Beijing has fallen: China's capital sinking by 11cm a year, satellite study warns

Excessive pumping of groundwater is causing the geology under the city to collapse, according to a new study using satellite imagery that reveals parts of Beijing – particularly its central business district – are subsiding each year by as much as 11 centimetres, or more than four inches.

The authors of the study warn that continued subsidence poses a safety threat to the city of more than 20 million, with “a strong impact on train operations” one of the predictions. [...]

In 2015 China inaugurated a mega-engineering project aimed at mitigating Beijing’s water crisis. The state completed construction of the South-North Water Diversion, a £48bn, 2,400km network of canals and tunnels, designed to divert 44.8bn cubic metres of water to the capital.

Even before the canal began delivering water, Beijing was easing up on some groundwater pumping. In January of 2015 the Chaoyang district announced plans to phase out 367 water wells, reducing the use of 10m cubic meters of underground water. [...]

Other cities around the world are experiencing subsidence caused by excessive water pumping or other factors. Mexico City is sinking by up to 28cm a year and Jakarta is subsiding at a similar rate. Bangkok is dropping annually by as much as 12cm, similar to Beijing, according to the Remote Sensing researchers.

read the article 

The Guardian: EU voting map lays bare depth of division across Britain

At first blush, London, where heavy rains helped push the turnout a notch below the average, appears as the capital of another land again – an island of Euro-enthusiasm amid a south-east that was mostly resolved to quit.

The majorities for remain in some inner-city boroughs in the capital were truly crushing: fully 75% of the ballot in Camden; 78% in Hackney; 66% in wealthy Kensington and Chelsea.

But move out a notch from the heart of the metropolis, beyond Zone 3 as the locals would say, and a few of the outlying districts begin to merge into the countryside beyond. To the south, Sutton went 54% for leave, and to the east, in working-class Barking and Dagenham, 63% wanted out. [...]

The exceptions, where voters wanted to remain part of Europe, sometimes came in pockets of particular prosperity – supposedly reactionary Tunbridge Wells, for instance was 55% remain, well-to-do voters there, perhaps, fearing they had more to lose. Then there was a whole cluster of relatively prosperous districts to London’s west, covering parts of Berkshire and Oxfordshire, which provided a pro-European blob on the map.

But the most notable exceptions were the cities in which universities loomed large – 56% for remain in Norwich, over 60% in Bristol, rising to 70%-plus in Oxford and Cambridge. All of these cities home, no doubt, to many of “the experts” derided by the leavers. Exactly the same trends were at work in Wales, with the prosperous Vale of Glamorgan and the student-heavy capital in Cardiff bucking the overall trend.

read the article 

The Guardian: We have woken up in a different country

For one thing, there is now a genuine question over the shape of this kingdom. Scotland (like London) voted to remain inside the European Union. Every one of its political parties (bar Ukip) urged a remain vote. Yet now Scotland is set to be dragged out of the EU, against its collective will.

The demand will be loud and instant for Scotland to assure its own destiny by breaking free of the UK. This is precisely the kind of “material change” that the Scottish National party always said would be enough to warrant a second referendum to follow the one held in 2014. And this time, surely, there will be a majority for independence. So a first legacy of 23 June could well be the imminent break-up of the UK.

The implications will be profound for Northern Ireland too. The return of a “hard border” between north and south imperils a peace that was hard-won and too often taken for granted. Note this morning’s warning from Sinn Féin that the British government has “forfeited any mandate to represent the economic and political interests of people in Northern Ireland”.

Of course, the divisions don’t end there. England is exposed as a land divided: London, along with the cities of Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Bristol stood apart from the rest of England and Wales in wanting to stay in. There is a yawning class divide, pitting city against town and, more profoundly, those who feel they have something to lose against those who feel they do not.

read the article