The Greek island of Kastellorizo is normally a sleepy tourist destination, with its population of just a few hundred mostly isolated from the events of the outside world. But life on the picturesque island shifted dramatically with the outbreak of the Syrian war in 2011 and the ensuing refugee crisis. Located just a mile off the south coast of Turkey, for a while Kastellorizo became an impromptu waypoint for Syrian refugees arriving on smugglers’ boats, seeking asylum elsewhere in Europe. With limited resources to accommodate the enormous influx of people, the residents received them in varying ways: some did everything they could to help; others lashed out in anger; most landed somewhere in the middle, struggling to provide aid without upending their own lives. Intertwining the perspectives of several Syrian refugees and Kastellorizo residents, Alexandra Liveris’s documentary humanises the bitter realities of the ongoing migrant crisis, in which both displaced people and those receiving them are pushed to their limits.
12 June 2018
The Guardian: Is marriage really on the decline because of men's cheap access to sex?
“Marriage is not in decline, it is in delay,” says historian Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, a History and director of research and public education at the Council on Contemporary Families. [...]
Coontz explains what I already know to be anecdotally true, having graduated college in 2008, the year the economy collapsed: both women and men want to be economically and educationally set before they marry – an ambition increasingly harder for a generational cohort facing crippling debt, poor healthcare and an economy where stable career ladders have been replaced by part-time freelance gigs.
Watching half of our parents’ generation get divorced was probably not the biggest advertisement for marriage either. But dragging our feet may end up helping us on that front too. If you care about the quality of the marriage you enter into, putting marriage off is good thinking: marrying young heightens the probability of divorce, and the longer people know each other before tying the knot the more likely they are to stay together.
The one group where marriage appears to be in actual decline, rather than delay, is adults who are at the very bottom of the socio-economic hierarchy. [...]
Caroline Rusterholz, a historian of sexuality at Birkbeck College, University of London, says that the idea of harmonious sex within marriage began in the 1930s – enabled by the publication of pamphlets and the first opening of family clinics, among other factors – but ideas about sex were taught in ways in line with gender expectations of the time.
The Economist: The calculations of Muhammad bin Salman
Prince Muhammad has loosened the kingdom’s social restrictions. The decades-old ban on female drivers will be lifted on June 24th. But when citizens demand new rights, instead of waiting patiently to be granted them by royal decree, they are often locked up. The effect has been stifling. Before talking politics over the phone, Saudis take precautions, such as using virtual private networks and encrypted dialling services. Many have purged their Twitter accounts or closed them. “Sorry. I’m not ready to talk,” writes a once-verbose activist. They are all terrified, says a diplomat.
Prince Muhammad sees no contradiction in all this. His social contract apes that of the United Arab Emirates, which grants subjects social freedoms provided they forgo political ones. In less than a year as crown prince, he has taken direct control of media outlets and big businesses, or appointed his men to their boards. Once-powerful clerics and princely challengers have been squashed. Gone is talk of holding elections for the Shura council, a royally appointed proto-parliament. [...]
Western firms, skilled in secret psychological operations, have been hired to help shape public opinion. They include SCL Group, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, the political-data firm that claims to have helped President Donald Trump win election. Before Prince Muhammad’s economic- and social-reform drive, SCL Group, a British firm, conducted dozens of focus groups with ordinary Saudis and found evidence of widespread discontent with the monarchy. It advised the regime on how to stay in power.
IFLScience: Scientists Think They Have Found The Reason Some People Are Left-Handed – And It's Not What You Might Think
Research since the 1980s has found that our preference for our left or right hand is most likely determined before we are born — ultrasound screenings suggest as early as the eighth week of pregnancy. From the 13th week in the womb, babies tend to suck either their right or their left thumb. [...]
The research — by Sebastian Ocklenburg, Judith Schmitz, and Onur Gunturkun from Ruhr University Bochum, along with other colleagues from the Netherlands and South Africa — found that gene activity in the spinal cord was asymmetrical in the womb and could be what causes a person to be left- or right-handed. [...]
Why exactly people are left-handed is still a bit of a mystery — partly because left-handed people are often excluded from scientific research, experts say — and it's hard to predict whether a child will be left or right-handed once they are born.
Independent: Theresa May’s refusal to accept her responsibility for the Windrush scandal is shameful
If you create a hostile environment for illegal immigrants it means a presumption by officials against anyone with gaps in their documentation. It means making it hard for people who “are British”, as Ms May put it, to prove it, and it means preventing them from working or claiming benefits while they try to do so.
Which is why we are disappointed by the prime minister’s refusal to countenance a change to the hostile environment policy in an interview with The Independent on her trip to the G7 summit in Canada. She refused three times to say it should change, arguing all that was required was it for to be carried out more carefully so people are not “mistakenly caught up”. [...]
Since the outcry over the Windrush cases, the Home Office has made the hostile environment less hostile. People whose attempts to confirm their status had been delayed and disbelieved for years suddenly found themselves issued with papers after short interviews – something a reasonable bureaucracy would have been capable of doing all along.
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