Politico: Labour’s last Scottish bastion crumbles

In Glasgow, and across Scotland, Labour is in steep decline. In the 2015 U.K. general election, the party lost all but one of its 41 Scottish seats to the Scottish National Party (SNP), including all seven in Glasgow. In 2016, the SNP won elections to the Scottish parliament for the third successive time, also claiming all the directly elected seats in Glasgow. And now Labour faces a double-drubbing — in local council elections this coming Thursday and again in Britain’s snap general election on June 8. [...]

The immediate — and most obvious — cause of Labour’s precipitous demise is the rise of Scottish nationalism. Three years ago, Glasgow voted Yes to independence despite Labour campaigning to maintain the three-centuries-old union with England and the rest of the United Kingdom. [...]

The independence campaign accelerated a shift from Labour to the SNP that began with Scottish devolution in the late 1990s but gathered pace after Tony Blair’s decision to go to war in Iraq. “Iraq was a big moment for me because I realized that what our government was telling us was a load of rubbish,” says Feargal Dalton, an Irish-born Royal Navy veteran elected as Glasgow SNP councillor in 2012. [...]

Recent polls have put support for the Scottish Tories as high as a third, raising the possibility of the Conservatives taking a number of the record 56 Scottish seats won by the SNP. Even in Glasgow, where the Tories hold only a single council seat, there are hopes of a breakthrough in a city identified as “the least Conservative place in Britain” based on previous election results.

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The Washington Post: France’s critical election happens in June, not on Sunday

France’s president appoints the premier, but once in office, the premier can be removed only by the assembly. This means the premier answers to the parliament, not the president. And the French constitution gives the premier, not the president, greater lawmaking powers. The president, for example, has no veto power, so the assembly can pass legislation by a bare majority even over the president’s objections. 

The French premier also has some tools that have no real parallel in pure presidential systems with their separation of powers. Article 49 of the French constitution allows the premier to propose legislation under a special rule — if the assembly takes no action, the proposal becomes law, but a negative vote from the assembly brings down the government. The maneuver is known as the guillotine. [...]

During cohabitation periods, the presidency diminished in stature, and the premier tended to exercise the main executive policymaking authority. For example, in the late 1980s, Chirac as premier engineered a major tax cut and privatized state-owned enterprises while the Socialist Mitterand could only watch.

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Motherboard: The First Space Colonies Might Be Illegal

Chief among them is the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which makes it illegal for countries to appropriate the moon or other celestial bodies. That treaty notoriously does not specifically mention private citizens, which has led to people like Dennis Hope, a Nevada-based “real estate agent” selling tracts of land on the moon and claiming the treaty doesn’t apply to him as a private citizen. So far, Hope hasn’t run into much legal trouble, but that’s because he’s basically selling novelty certificates to suckers (no offense). The whole paradigm changes when someone like Bigelow Airspace, who is currently working with NASA, decides to make a private space station or announces plans to put an inflatable on the moon.  [...]

But that doesn’t mean that commercial space is inherently doomed. Amending the space treaty isn’t going to be easy, but it also might not even be necessary. Sattler says that there is enough wiggle-room in the language of the treaty that spacefaring nations can sign memoranda of understanding with each other to allow specific commercial activities, a move that would be several orders of magnitude easier to finagle than a whole new international treaty.  [...]

Instead, the State Department or some other national body is going to have to strike a deal with other nations—and other nations that want to do this are going to have to strike a deal with us. Considering that Russia just announced plans to have moon bases by 2030 (and potentially plans to extract minerals there) and says it’s done working with the United States in space, that may be a negotiation that requires more than just a rubber stamp.

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Independent: These maps will change how you think about immigration

Earlier in the year, Jakub Marian, a Czech linguist, mathematician, and artist, made a series of maps on immigration, using UN data from 2010 to 2015.

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The Telegraph: Gluten-free diet should not be eaten by people who are not coeliac, say scientists

Around one per cent of Britons are genuinely gluten-intolerant, and face a string of debilitating symptoms including vomiting, nerve problems, anaemia, inflammation and an increased risk of coronary heart disease.

However some estimates put the proportion of adults adhering to gluten-free diets in the UK at more than 12 per cent, many believing that it is better for the heart.

Researchers at Harvard University looked at data from nearly 120,000 people over 26 years and found that going gluten-free did not cut the risk of heart disease.

And they warned that restricting dietary gluten may result in a low intake of whole grains, which are known to be beneficial for the heart. [...]

However a recent study by Harvard also suggested that ingesting only small amounts of gluten, or avoiding it altogether, increases the danger of diabetes by as much as 13 per cent.

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