WorldAffairs: Putin's World: Russia’s Return to the World Stage

Over the last decade, Russia has re-emerged as a powerful global player. In this week’s episode, we’re considering how President Vladimir Putin reinvigorated Russia's influence on the global stage and the potential impact of his future ambitions. Angela Stent,director of the center for Eurasian, Russian and East European studies at Georgetown University and author of the new book “Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and With the Rest,” discusses what Russian resurgence means for the world with WorldAffairs Co-Host Ray Suarez.

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The Guardian Today in Focus: Accused of cheating: another immigration scandal?

In 2014, a BBC documentary drew attention to fraud in the UK’s international student visa system, including cheating in English language tests at two centres. The Home Office concluded that around 34,000 of the 58,458 students who had taken the test between 2011 and 2014 had cheated.

A government watchdog has launched an investigation into the Home Office’s decision to cancel or curtail the visas of those it accuses of cheating, as well as removing more than 1,000 people from the UK. MPs are warning the scandal could be “bigger than Windrush”.

Amelia Gentleman, the Guardian reporter who exposed the Windrush scandal, talks to Anushka Asthana about her latest investigation. We also hear from Hussain (not his real name) who describes the devastating impact the decision has had on his life.

And: Magid Magid, the youngest person to hold office as lord mayor of Sheffield, reflects on his time in the role and his decision to stand as a Green party MEP.

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The Guardian Longreads: How to identify a body: the Marchioness disaster and my life in forensic pathology

In the late 1980s in the UK, there were a series of disasters that claimed many lives. Few, if any, of these disasters could exactly be called an accident. They almost all exposed major systems failures. In March 1987, the car and passenger ferry Herald of Free Enterprise capsized outside the Belgian port of Zeebrugge because the bow door had been left open: 193 passengers and crew died. In August 1987, Michael Ryan went on a killing spree and shot 31 people in Hungerford before killing himself. In November 1987, a lit match dropped down through an escalator to the Piccadilly line at King’s Cross station, causing a fire that claimed the lives of 31 people and injured a hundred more. In July 1988, the Piper Alpha oil rig in the North Sea, 120 miles (190km) north-east of Aberdeen blew up, killing 167 men. [...]

In mass disaster management, false identification is the biggest fear. This is obviously hideous for everyone, especially if a family later begins to suspect they may have buried the wrong body. The coroner rightly wanted the most secure and accurate identification methods that were possible. Today, we have the option of DNA analysis, but it was not available to us then. The two most secure means were still fingerprints and comparison of teeth with dental records. The problem with dental records is that you, of course, have to know the name of the missing before you can begin to search for their dentist, and only when the name of the dentist is known can you request their records. That was clearly going to take a long time. [...]

People find it hard to believe that, in mass disasters, visual identification is unreliable, especially so when death has been traumatic, or the body has been immersed in water. But even the uninjured and undecomposed dead are often simply not recognisable to those who knew them as animated individuals. Without life, facial expression or movement, robbed of our essential selves, our bodies can look very different. The fact is that relatives, even immediate family, when they are under great stress, are very likely to make mistakes. They may identify a body that isn’t their relative. Or they may not correctly identify a body that really is their loved one.

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UnHerd: Sex, sin and the Catholics

Secondly, Vatican II mostly ignored what Loyola professor Stephen R. Schloesser calls “biopolitics” – issues of sex, reproduction and the regulation of the human body. In some ways, this oversight was understandable. Many of the defining moments of modern biopolitics – the Stonewall Riots and the subsequent gay rights movement; Roe v. Wade; legalization of no-fault divorces and the widespread use of “the pill” in western societies – did not occur until after Vatican II concluded. But by offering little guidance on these issues, Vatican II created an opening for more conservative bishops to reassert their influence and put the brakes on what they saw an immoral Leftward shift in the Church. [...]

This conspiracy theory has only grown since the sexual abuse scandal broke. Conservative Catholic leaders and groups like the American-based Catholic League use the fact that the victims of abuse have been mostly boys as “proof” that the abuse is homosexual rather than paedophilic in nature. The abuse is, supposedly, just another form of the “self-indulgence” towards which gay priests are inclined. Pope Francis’ opponents – such as Carlo Maria Viganò, a disgruntled former Vatican ambassador to the United States – explicitly make this argument and accuse Francis of ignoring or even placating the “gay mafia” to the detriment of the Church. [...]

Instead of changing doctrines about sin, Pope Francis has attempted to emphasise those concerning humility and Amoris laetiti, “the joy of love” – as the address he gave after the Synods on the Family was called. Instead of discussing sex in terms of restrictions and prohibitions, Francis has attempted to emphasise the role of sex as “a gift from God”. And rather than searching for a “homosexual clique” at the centre of the Church’s problems, the Pope is seeking to directly hold abusive priests and their enablers to account and to change the culture that encouraged the Church to avoid scandal at the cost of not protecting its most vulnerable members. [...]

Francis’ Church would be one in which LGBTQ Catholics, divorcees, the remarried and those using birth control could participate in the public life of the Church, while they (and their priests) perhaps squint at the particulars of certain doctrines on which they disagree. It would be a Church where women feel respected and valued, even if their roles do not match their male counterparts. And it would be a Church where bishops and priests feel a solemn duty to protect the youngest and most vulnerable members of their flock from abuse – and take swift action against colleagues who violate their trust, without searching for ways to deflect blame.

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UnHerd: What does it mean to be French?

When President Emmanuel Macron said recently that it was time for France to “recreate the art of being French”, there was merriment abroad and puzzlement at home. When did the French ever stop being French? Why is being French an “art”? Is Frenchness not also an infinite capacity for protest, division and complaint? [...]

France is a country which is, en masse, prone to anger, pessimism and self-destruction but individually devoted to the pursuit of happiness. France is a country which is (mostly) proud of its past but often distrustful of the future. [...]

What Macron was attempting to achieve with these comments was three-fold. He was using the Notre Dame calamity to wrap himself in the cloak of France’s long history. He was implying that the restoration of French self-confidence and creativity was a sacred duty, like the restoration of Notre Dame. And he was trying to counter the impression – once encouraged by himself but now caricatured by the Far Right, the Far Left and the Gilets Jaunes – that he is a globalist who regards French national traditions and habits of mind as handicap and a misfortune. [...]

France’s real problem is that it has a smaller proportion of its adult population in productive work than other developed nations. Early retirement, high youth unemployment and interminable studies mean that France has barely 70% of its 16 to 65 population in work – compared to almost 80% in, say, Britain and Germany.

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Nautilus Magazine: Why a Traffic Flow Suddenly Turns Into a Traffic Jam

Surprisingly, when all these effects are turned off, phantom traffic jams still occur! This observation tells us that phantom jams are not the fault of individual drivers, but result instead from the collective behavior of all drivers on the road. It works like this. Envision a uniform traffic flow: All vehicles are evenly distributed along the highway, and all drive with the same velocity. Under perfect conditions, this ideal traffic flow could persist forever. However, in reality, the flow is constantly exposed to small perturbations: imperfections on the asphalt, tiny hiccups of the engines, half-seconds of driver inattention, and so on. To predict the evolution of this traffic flow, the big question is to decide whether these small perturbations decay, or are amplified. [...]

The mathematical analysis of traffic models reveals that these two are competing effects. The delay before drivers reach their target velocity causes the growth of perturbations, while traffic pressure makes perturbations decay. A uniform flow profile is stable if the anticipation effect dominates, which it does when traffic density is low. The delay effect dominates when traffic densities are high, causing instabilities and, ultimately, phantom jams. [...]

Instead, the driving behavior of a vehicle must be affected before it runs into a jamiton. Wireless communication between vehicles provides one possibility to achieve this goal, and today’s mathematical models allow us to develop appropriate ways to use tomorrow’s technology. For example, once a vehicle detects a sudden braking event followed by an immediate acceleration, it can broadcast a “jamiton warning” to the vehicles following it within a mile distance. The drivers of those vehicles can then, at the least, prepare for unexpected braking; or, better still, increase their headway so that they can eventually contribute to the dissipation of the traffic wave.

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