FiveThirtyEight: Clinton Leads Trump — And Obama And Reagan — In The Newspaper Endorsement Race

This paragraph, from USA Today’s editorial “Trump is unfit for the presidency,” is not an outlier. It reflects yet another oddity of the 2016 election cycle: The unprecedented shunning of a major-party nominee by nearly every widely read daily publication in the country.

Of the top 100 daily newspapers ranked by 2016 circulation, 55 have endorsed Hillary Clinton.1 Only one, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, has endorsed Donald Trump.

For many newspapers, this hardly comes as a surprise; The New York Times, for instance, has endorsed a Democrat in every presidential race since 1960. But for others, a Clinton endorsement is truly off-brand. Six major papers — The Dallas Morning News, Arizona Republic, San Diego Union-Tribune, Columbus Dispatch, Omaha World-Herald, and Cincinnati Enquirer — are each breaking a streak of Republican endorsements going back 32 years or more to choose Clinton. Other reliably conservative editorial boards are instead siding with Libertarian Gary Johnson, or simply refusing to pick a candidate. And USA Today, the highest-circulation daily newspaper in the country, is stepping into the endorsement game for the first time with the “anti-endorsement” of Trump quoted above. [...]

So perhaps Clinton’s unparalleled landslide in newspaper endorsements is reflective not of ideological bias, but of general agreement among journalists — conservative as well as liberal — as to the qualities that make a candidate fit or unfit for the presidency.

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Quartz: 99.9% of Americans will know a victim of gun violence in their lifetime

Almost every single American—99.85%—will know at least one victim of gun violence during his or her lifetime, a recent analysis in the journal Preventive Medicine estimates.

Around 30,000 gun-related deaths and 80,000 non-fatal injuries occur annually in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A study published in the American Journal of Medicine earlier this year showed that Americans were 10 times more likely to die as a result of a firearm compared with residents of 22 other high-income countries. Of all firearm deaths in all these countries, more than 80% occur in the US. [...]

The researchers made additional assumptions, such as that gun violence happens to anyone at random, so all individuals face same risk. In reality, of course, some people are much more likely to be shot than others, but the thinking here is that, when averaged across the entire US population, everyone’s likelihood of experiencing gun violence is about the same.

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FiveThirtyEight: Terriers Were Once The Greatest Dogs In The World

Ultimately, each dog is judged according to its own breed’s rubric. In the Best in Show ring, a dog competes against the others, but also against the platonic ideal of its own breed. And these ideals are public record. The American Kennel Club’s standard for the wire fox terrier, for example, comes in at just over three dense, single-spaced pages. [...]

Westminster’s dog show is the second-longest-continuously-running sporting event (if you’ll permit it the label) in the country, after the Kentucky Derby (ditto). Since Westminster first crowned a Best in Show, in 1907, 46 winners have been terriers. Of the 43 Best in Shows that were awarded in the first half of the 20th century, 29 went to a terrier.1 The first three Best in Shows all went to the same terrier — Warren Remedy, a fox terrier. The terrier “is to Westminster awards what Meryl Streep is to the Oscars, except that the terriers win more,” The New York Times wrote in 2003. But this has changed. The market and tastes that made terriers such popular show dogs in the first half of last century shifted, and a broad decline in terrier popularity is now mirrored by fewer terrier Best in Show titles. [...]

For some terrier breeds, the situation is existential. In 2011, a campaign was launched to save the Sealyham terrier — winner of four Westminster Best in Shows and once the dog of choice of King George V, Cary Grant and Elizabeth Taylor — from extinction. “If we can save the rhino or tiger, we can surely save this useful and charming breed of dog,” the British magazine Country Life wrote. Some related breeds, like the English white terrier, from which the Sealyham line descends, have already gone extinct. In 2010, only 49 Sealyham puppies were registered with the U.K.’s Kennel Club, down from 2,000 in the breed’s peak years. The near-extinction of the Sealyham is an extreme illustration of terrier decline — even among terriers, the Sealyham is extremely difficult to show. The dogs have very thick coats, for one thing, and their white fur tends to get dirty easily.

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CityLab: In Houston, an Underground Cistern Is a New Temple for Art

Houston built its cistern in 1926 to serve as the city’s underground water reservoir. By 2007, the year that the city decommissioned it, Houston was already sourcing its drinking water from lakes and rivers. The cistern had sprung a leak over the past decade that rendered it unusable. So the city locked it up and promptly forgot all about it.

The cistern might have stayed lost, too, had it not been for two things: One, from the outside, it forms a rather prominent hill in a city that doesn’t have many. Two, the cistern enjoys pride of place near the edge of Buffalo Bayou Park, the 160-acre stretch of restored parkland that opened to great fanfare in the summer of 2015. [...]

The bottom of the Houston Cistern is still covered by about 6 inches of water; the egress added by Page is the only part of the structure that can be occupied by people, which limits tours to just 30 visitors at a time. Nevertheless, Buffalo Bayou Park has registered more than 11,000 registrations for tours since the cistern opened to visitors in May.

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ArchDaily: Trouble Hits the Final Stages of Gaudí's La Sagrada Familia

Over the course of 134 years of construction of the Sagrada Familia, the unfinished masterpiece of Antoni Gaudi in Barcelona has experienced three unresolved conflicts. First, there was a lack of a (contemporary) construction permit, the nonpayment of taxes, and finally the uncertainty about whether or not to finally build the large plaza to the southeast that Gaudí imagined with the forced expulsion of up to 3,000 residents and lessees, all living in the area surrounding Sagrada Familia’s Glory Façade.

In recent days, these three issues have come to light almost simultaneously, but let’s discuss them one by one. Bitterly upset by what he describes as "a project without plans in Gaudi's name" Councilman of Barcelona Architecture, Urban Landscape and Heritage Daniel Mòdol called the Sagrada Familia a "giant Easter cake". [...]

Regarding the building permit, the Board of the Sagrada Familia has made a statement to the Spanish press that the construction is based on a permit request made to the City of Sant Martí de Provençals in 1885, 12 years before its administrative annexation to Barcelona. Jordi Fauli, the head architect of the temple explained the Board’s position on the absence of a building permit, following questioning from El País last September:

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Al Jazeera: How Oman aims to become a tourist hub

Oman's economy was powered by agriculture, fishing, camel and goat herding, and handicrafts, until oil was discovered, propelling the sultanate's dramatic development over the past four decades. But when oil prices plunged in 2015, Oman ran a budget deficit of $8.57bn, forcing the government to raise corporate taxes, fuel prices and visa fees, and to cut subsidies. Many private companies started downsizing and suspended bonuses, and some expatriates sent their families home to cut back on living costs. [...]

But Oman plans to replace its heavy reliance on hydrocarbons by diversifying its economy, and transforming the tourism industry into a major revenue generator.

"Tourism certainly can and is playing a major role in Oman's economy," James Wilson, CEO of the state-run developer Omran, told Al Jazeera. "The government is now focused on five key economic sectors: tourism, logistics, manufacturing, mining and fisheries, all of which will help Oman advance from its current dependency on oil." [...]

Yet Oman's dream of becoming a tourist hub in the region is strewn with difficulties. Tourist visa regulations are one issue. A lack of transportation for tourists may also be a difficulty: Although Oman is dotted by a string of valleys with lush date plantations and emerald-green waters, they are far from the capital Muscat, where much of the accommodation lies.

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Bloomberg: Record Green Power Installations Beat Fossil Fuel for First Time

Renewable energy reached an important turning point last year with record new installations of emissions-free power surpassing sources that burn fossil fuel, according the International Energy Agency.

New installations of renewable energy overtook conventional power for the first time in 2015, the Paris-based agency said Tuesday in its Medium-Term Renewable Energy Market Report. Global green power rose by a record 153 gigawatts, equivalent to 55 percent of newly installed capacity last year. Total installed capacity exceeded coal for the first time, the IEA said. [...]

The IEA raised its estimate of the amount of green energy on power grids by 13 percent, revising its forecast to 42 percent by 2021. About 500,000 solar panels were installed each day across the globe in 2015, according to the report.

Renewables capacity will be supported by falling costs, according to the agency. Solar panels are projected to be a quarter cheaper over the five year forecast period ending in 2021. Onshore wind-turbine prices may drop 15 percent.

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Politico: How the European Left can survive

These are terrible times for center-left parties in Europe. Social Democrats were defeated in Spain, Croatia and Ireland this year, and suffered crushing losses in Lithuania and the Czech Republic. In recent votes in the United Kingdom and Austria, up to 80 percent of workers turned away from the center-left and cast their vote for right-wing populists. Today, only two European Union countries are exclusively governed by the center-left: Portugal — where a battered Social Democratic Party heads a shaky minority government — and the Mediterranean island of Malta. [...]

According to annual continent-wide Eurobarometer polls conducted by the European Commission, immigration and terrorism trump the economy and unemployment as European’s biggest concerns. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. EU-wide unemployment is currently at the lowest level since 2009 and even youth joblessness is decreasing. [...]

Navigating this sensitive and controversial issue without giving in to prejudice is a daunting task, but it is crucial that the center-left establishment recognize and address voters’ genuine concerns. Dismissing populist voters and labeling them as “extremist” will not help solve the root causes of the problem. This approach extends an invitation for real extremists and fringe politicians, who are only too keen to exploit the opportunity.

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