Quartz: The history of the tango is actually kind of gay

From this perspective, the past few years of queer tango in Argentina are an innovation, an adaptation from the traditional gender roles. But, despite a mythology that links the tango with brothels, historical research shows that the tango was danced by male couples from the beginning. And so, rather than pushing boundaries, queer tango is a return to the origins of the dance. [...]

Men would practice together, perfecting their polka and waltz so that they could impress a woman when the time came. It seems the tango began in the tenements as the men’s fantasy dance. [...]

Though men began dancing tango with an eye to wooing women, Trenner says there was certainly a “semi-secret” gay culture. There were certain dancers who were famously good followers and who didn’t go to social dances with women. These men were “fought over,” says Trenner, as the preferred partners. “There was an unstated queer element of the male practice.” [...]

But though gay milongas still face some opposition, two men dancing together is the most traditional form of the tango. And in other ways, too, queer tango embodies the spirit of the dance. “The dance represents a culture that is not dominant. It’s not the mainstream culture,” says Taylor. “For a long time, this was an art not of entertainment but resistance.”

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Al Jazeera: Fighting spatial apartheid in South Africa

The Woodstock Hub claims that Beukes and the other Bromwell Street tenants are being evicted for failure to pay rent. But while tenants concede that they have not been paying rent for the past two years, they say that they have been unable to establish any contact with the new owners since they took over the property. Residents believe that this has been part of a deliberate move to facilitate their eviction and avoid dealing with long-standing lease agreements. [...]

He points out that much of this former industrial area escaped the large-scale segregation of the apartheid state's Group Areas Act, which ripped apart other similarly diverse Cape Town communities, most famously District 6.

The Act saw most Capetonians of colour cast out into the collection of marginalised townships now known as the Cape Flats and sometimes still referred to as the "apartheid's dumping ground". [...]

Twenty-two years since the end of apartheid, this situation is being mirrored across Cape Town, with free market forces, favourable tax breaks and rocketing property prices entrenching Cape Town's undesirable status as one of the most segregated cities in South Africa.

But a new campaign dubbed Reclaim the City aims to finally wrest Cape Town's soul from apartheid's enduring legacies and what activists see as its contemporary manifestation. Marching under the banner of "Land for people, not for profit", the campaign is fighting to reimagine the city as a more racially and economically integrated and equal space.

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Al Jazeera: Zulu king: I won't let my people forget our history

KwaZulu-Natal, a region in eastern South Africa with the Drakensberg Mountains to the west and the Indian Ocean to the east, is home to one of the most powerful kingdoms in the African continent - the Zulu. [...]

The then newly born nation existed in relative peace until the late 1800s, when British troops invaded Zulu territory and divided the land.

The Zulu never regained their independence.

Today, as estimated 11 million Zulus live in South Africa.

They account for about 22 percent of the population, but other smaller communities live in nearby countries, such as Lesotho, where there are around 320,000 Zulus, Zimbabwe (152,000), Swaziland (106,000), Malawi (64,000), Botswana (5,300), and Mozambique (3,900). And they recognise one man - Goodwill Zwelithini - as their king. [...]

On Talk to Al Jazeera he discusses the threats his culture has faced, reviving traditions some see as controversial, and the lack of emphasis on Zulu and other people's histories in the curriculums of South African schools. 

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Al Jazeera: The woman turning rubbish into homes in Pakistan

After a year of research, she created the Gul Bahao (flow the flowers) project.

With her "team of environmentalists", Latif devises ways of using rubbish to create houses, water reservoirs, fodder for livestock and instant compost.

"This hasn't been easy," she says. "I realised I had to dedicate my whole life to it. Once you commit, you can't back out." [...]

Gul Bahao started off 22 years ago with an "army" of more than 70 boys from Uzbekistan, who helped Latif collect plastic, vegetable and fruit peels, and other material from all over Karachi.

In 2004, Latif established a research centre on government-owned land in front of some shack homes. She recalls how trucks and minivans would roll out of it in those early days. [...]

Everything the project creates - from shelters to tables, chairs and toilets - consists of waste plastic inside a thermopore shell. The plastic - "virgin", as Latif calls it to differentiate it from other rubbish - is mostly confectionary wrappers that factory owners have rejected due to printing issues. They form "bricks" that are then tied together to create the finished product. For the pillars of the shelters, the bricks are tied with wooden poles which are fitted into a roughly two-foot deep hole in the ground.

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Reuters: German far-right leader wants to send refugees to islands outside Europe

The head of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) says Berlin should send rejected asylum seekers and illegal immigrants to islands outside Europe and turn its refugee office into an emigration bureau. [...]

"Illegal migrants and asylum seekers whose applications are rejected will be accommodated on the two islands outside Europe that are protected by the United Nations," Petry added, without naming the two islands she had in mind.

German media interpreted her remarks as a reference to Nauru and Manus, two Pacific islands where Australia funds camps to hold asylum seekers intercepted trying to reach its shores by boat. They are told they will never be settled in Australia.

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Salon: Trump’s money mystery: Trump is definitely hiding something, but the question is what

Of course, many have speculated for months that his obfuscating is because he has much less money than he claims; some have suggested that the returns would reveal that Trump is a complete chiseler when it comes to contributing to charity. [...]

We know that Trump’s son, Donald Jr., told a real estate conference in 2008 that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets…We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” The Guardian reports there are “several Russian billionaires tied to Trump” and notes Trump’s sale of a Palm Beach mansion for $95 million to Russian fertilizer billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, “who was reported in the Panama Papers leaks to have used offshore law firms to hid more than $2 billion worth of artworks, including pieces by Picasso, Van Gogh and Leonardo, from his wife in advance of their divorce.” [...]

Yes, the body of evidence, while large, is circumstantial. But where there’s smoke, which makes it all the more imperative that Trump let the press and public see his tax returns so we have a chance at piecing together the truth.

There is no sense in allowing a man with this potentially monstrous amount of foreign debt to be our president, especially when he is someone monumentally indifferent to understanding America’s place in the world, a fool whose entire worldview seems equivalent to that of the blowhard at the local tavern whose total knowledge comes from something he heard from a guy once.

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BBC4 Beyond Belief: Apparitions of Mary

Since 2010 a Vatican commission has been investigating the alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina. An announcement is expected soon, amid concerns that the supernatural claims of six visionaries are getting out of the Vatican's control. Beginning in 1981, the apparitions purportedly continue daily, and thousands of pilgrims from all over the world travel to the small town each month to meet the alleged seers. What exactly are Marian apparitions and how have they been explained? What are some of the stories associated with them? Why have they become such a powerful tool for conversion over recent decades? Are they always an aid to religious devotion or can they lead to unhealthy superstition?

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TED Talk: Why Brexit happened -- and what to do next | Alexander Betts

We are embarrassingly unaware of how divided our societies are, and Brexit grew out of a deep, unexamined divide between those that fear globalization and those that embrace it, says social scientist Alexander Betts. How do we now address that fear as well as growing disillusionment with the political establishment, while refusing to give in to xenophobia and nationalism? Join Betts as he discusses four post-Brexit steps toward a more inclusive world.