Thursday, June 1, 2023

'An exciting possibility': scientists discover markedly different kangaroos on either side of Australia's dingo fence

S41
'An exciting possibility': scientists discover markedly different kangaroos on either side of Australia's dingo fence    

Australia’s dingo fence is an internationally renowned mega-structure. Stretching more than 5,600 kilometres, it was completed in the 1950s to keep sheep safe from dingoes. But it also inadvertently protects some native species.We found young kangaroos on the side exposed to dingoes grew more quickly than their protected counterparts. This has potentially big repercussions for the health of these juveniles.

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S11
Roujiamo: China's 2,200-year-old 'burger'    

My first encounter with roujiamo (肉夹馍) was on an early winter's day a quarter of a century ago, in a bitterly cold, wind-scoured Beijing alleyway. There, I stumbled across a weather-beaten itinerant vendor, braced against the chill in a thick padded-cotton jacket and fur hat, making roujiamo to order off the back of a three-wheeled bicycle cart. From a bubbling, soot-black cauldron suspended over a blazing puck of coal, he ladled out long-braised morsels of pork and plunked them onto a tree-stump chopping block. Next, he used a cleaver to mince the pork together with what seemed like an entire fist's-worth of coriander, added a dollop of rich broth from the pot, and wielded the cleaver once more to deftly slice open a crisp, hand-sized freshly baked flatbread and nestle the glistening pile of meat inside. When he handed it over, wrapped in a plastic bag, it was so hot that it scalded my fingers. I gingerly peeled back the edges of the bag and took a bite. In the fading light of that winter afternoon, roujiamo – the crunch of the bun, the meltingly tender pork with its scalding burst of juice and the bracing tang of coriander – was a revelation.

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S4
Enchantment and the Courage of Joy: Ren    

Each month, I spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars keeping The Marginalian going. For seventeen years, it has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, not even an assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor has made your own life more livable in the past year (or the past decade), please consider aiding its sustenance with a one-time or loyal donation. Your support makes all the difference.In a world pocked by cynicism and pummeled by devastating news, to find joy for oneself and spark it in others, to find hope for oneself and spark it in others, is nothing less than a countercultural act of courage and resistance. This is not a matter of denying reality — it is a matter of discovering a parallel reality where joy and hope are equally valid ways of being. To live there is to live enchanted with the underlying wonder of reality, beneath the frightful stories we tell ourselves and are told about it.Having lost his mother to suicide, having lived through two World Wars, the Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte (November 21, 1898–August 15, 1967) devoted his life and his art to creating such a parallel world of enchantment.

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S8
Webinar: Building a Winning Workplace Culture: Strategies for Leaders    

Research shows that toxic workplace culture is a driving force behind employee attrition. In this webinar, you’ll unlock actionable insights for tackling toxic culture and building a winning workplace.Join us for a 60-minute webinar on building a winning organizational culture in today’s workforce. New research from Donald Sull and Charlie Sull has found that toxic workplace culture has been the driving force behind the Great Resignation. Meaning: Understanding and measuring culture has never been more critical for leaders.The authors’ multiyear research series demonstrates that measuring culture can also help managers identify opportunities for improvement, recognize areas where the organization is excelling, and build a culture that attracts top talent and boosts retention.

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S3
How the Octopus Came to Earth: Stunning 19th-Century French Chromolithographs of Cephalopods    

Each month, I spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars keeping The Marginalian going. For seventeen years, it has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, not even an assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor has made your own life more livable in the past year (or the past decade), please consider aiding its sustenance with a one-time or loyal donation. Your support makes all the difference.While the French seamstress turned scientist Jeanne Villepreux-Power was solving the ancient mystery of the argonaut, her compatriot Jean Baptiste Vérany (1800–1865) — a pharmacist turned naturalist and founder of Nice’s Natural History Museum — set out to illuminate the wonders of cephalopods in descriptions and depictions of unprecedented beauty and fidelity to reality. Half a century before the stunningly illustrated Cephalopod Atlas brought the life-forms of the deep to the human imagination, Vérany published Mediterranean Mollusks: Observations, Descriptions, Figures, and Chromolithographs from Life — a consummately illustrated catalogue of creatures entirely alien to the era’s lay imagination, suddenly and vividly alive in full color. When Vérany began working on his dream of bringing the underwater world to life on the page, chromolithography — a chemical process used for making multi-color prints — was still in its infancy in France. Determined to capture the living vibrancy of these creatures that had so enchanted him, he set out to teach himself the craft. Looking back on his long labors at mastering this art-science and applying it to his dream, he reflects:

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S10
Why Gen Z are so motivated by pay    

The oldest Gen Zers have had money on the brain since they first entered the workplace –and many have been dissatisfied with their pay packets. Data shows that as Gen Z enter and rise through the workforce, they’re highly pay motivated – and perhaps more than any other generation right now.The laser-focus on pay is not wholly new – 2016 data from jobs site Monster showed 70% of American Gen Zers named salary as their top work motivator, along with health insurance – but several years on, experts say the economic squeeze has made these young workers even more wage-conscious. In the past year, surveys show their salary expectations have skyrocketed: many are targeting six-figure salaries early in their careers. 

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S5
The New Risks ChatGPT Poses to Cybersecurity    

The FBI’s 2021 Internet Crime Report found that phishing is the most common IT threat in America. From a hacker’s perspective, ChatGPT is a game changer, affording hackers from all over the globe a near fluency in English to bolster their phishing campaigns. Bad actors may also be able to trick the AI into generating hacking code. And, of course, there’s the potential for ChatGPT itself to be hacked, disseminating dangerous misinformation and political propaganda. This article examines these new risks, explores the needed training and tools for cybersecurity professionals to respond, and calls for government oversight to ensure that AI usage doesn’t become detrimental to cybersecurity efforts.

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S14
What is Theravada Buddhism?    

Theravada, which means “the way of the elders,” is one of the two main schools of Buddhism. Its adherents consider Theravada to be the most authoritative branch because they believe their teachings come directly from the historical Buddha.As a scholar of Buddhism, I explain in my 2023 book “Living Theravada: Demystifying the People, Places and Practices of a Buddhist Tradition” that Theravada Buddhism has a number of distinguishing features.

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S17
Drone strikes hit Moscow and Kyiv -- in the growing world of drone warfare, anything goes when it comes to international law    

At least eight drone strikes hit Moscow in the early morning of May 30, 2023, damaging several buildings and injuring civilians.This follows Russia’s targeting residential buildings in Ukraine with a wave of drone attacks in late May, killing civilians.

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S70
How the 'perfect' job candidate has changed  

As the pandemic has changed many aspects of how we work and the workplace skills we value, it’s also evolved how companies are hiring new employees. In the past, a ‘perfect’ candidate may have attended a notable school, worked for high-profile companies and had proof of relevant hard skills – tangible technical abilities, suited specifically for a role.Now, however, experts say many companies are shaking off the old definition of an ideal candidate, and broadening the search to include non-traditional candidates and different skill sets. And in some cases, they seem to be ditching the idea of looking for the singularly perfect candidate altogether.

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S12
Roald Dahl: The fierce debate over rewriting children's classics    

Sir Salman Rushdie had his say. The UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak weighed in. The New York Times published a piece debating the pros and cons. Steven Spielberg offered his opinion. Even the Queen seemed to refer to it. When The Telegraph revealed earlier this year that hundreds of changes had been made to the original text of Roald Dahl's children's novels in their latest editions, the news caused quite a stir. The newspaper found that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, Matilda and more than a dozen other titles had words relating to weight, height, mental health, gender and skin colour removed. Some of the changes seemed baffling.For example, "You've gone white as a sheet!" in The BFG was now "You've gone still as a statue!" and nor could the BFG wear a "black" cloak. James and the Giant Peach's "Cloud-Men" had become "Cloud-People". "Aunt Sponge, the fat one, tripped over a box" in the same novel was now "Aunt Sponge tripped over a box". In fact, the word "fat" had been excised from every book. And lines not written by Dahl had been inserted. In The Witches, a reference to the fact that witches are bald and wear wigs was now followed by the new line: "There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that." Rushdie described the changes as "absurd censorship". A spokesman for the prime minister said: "It is important that works of literature, works of fiction, are preserved and not airbrushed."

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S2
Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" Brought to Life in a Spanish Flashmob of 100 Musicians    

Each month, I spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars keeping The Marginalian going. For seventeen years, it has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, not even an assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor has made your own life more livable in the past year (or the past decade), please consider aiding its sustenance with a one-time or loyal donation. Your support makes all the difference.Imagine what life would be like if lived, in May Sarton’s lovely phrase, with “joy instead of will.” That is what Beethoven imagined, and invited humanity to imagine, two centuries ago in the choral finale of his ninth and final symphony, known as “Ode to Joy” — an epochal hymn of the possible, half a lifetime in the making.In the spring of 2012, the Spanish city of Sabadell set out to celebrate the 130th anniversary of its founding with a most unusual, electrifying, and touchingly human rendition of Beethoven’s masterpiece, performed by a flashmob of 100 musicians from the Vallès Symphony Orchestra, the Lieder, Amics de l’Òpera and Coral Belles Arts choirs. Watching the townspeople — children with kites, elders with walkers, couples holding hands — gather to savor the unbidden music in a succession of confusion, delight, and ecstasy is the stuff of goosebumps: living proof that “music so readily transports us from the present to the past, or from what is actual to what is possible.”

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S13
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is 'dazzling' but still a 'disappointment'    

It feels as if a new Spider-Man film has come out every year for the past two decades, but 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse somersaults over the rest of them. One of surprisingly few big-screen superhero animations, it was also the first to exploit the idea of alternate universes, and the only one to reproduce the variety of visual styles and techniques that you can see when you flip through a stack of comics. Some parts looked painted, some looked hand-drawn, some looked as if they had been printed on cheap paper, complete with the Ben-Day dots that Roy Lichtenstein put in his paintings. The film was a game-changer – a Pop-Art extravaganza that took the medium to astonishing new places. And yet, most impressively of all, the many innovations were bound up in the heartfelt story and loveable characters.The premise was that a teenager from Brooklyn, Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore), became the Spider-Man of his own universe, only to discover that countless other universes had countless web-slinging, wall-climbing equivalents, including our old friend Peter Parker (Jake Johnson), Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), a Looney Tunes-style pig called Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), and a brooding 1930s vigilante, Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), who existed in black and white. The sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse takes everything further. This time, Miles meets hundreds of Spider-People, such as a guitar-toting punk from London (Daniel Kaluuya) who always looks as if he is on a torn, photo-copied poster, and a preening Indian Spider-Man (Karan Soni) from a reality in which Manhattan and Mumbai are the same place. If that weren't enough, Miles learns that these Spider-Men-and-Women have their own hi-tech headquarters where they monitor "anomalies" around the multiverse under the leadership of the gruff Spider-Man of the year 2099, Miguel O'Hara (Oscar Isaac).

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S15
Street scrolls: The beats, rhymes and spirituality of Latin hip-hop    

Alejandro Nava is affiliated with Casa Alitas, a non-profit organization that works with refugees and asylum-seekers. As a first-generation college graduate and a Latino from a family that constantly scrambled to make ends meet, there was very little in my upbringing that foreshadowed my current life as a religion professor and scholar. I didn’t grow up surrounded by books, and I spent many more hours in childhood dissecting hip-hop and shooting hoops than doing schoolwork.

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S18
To have better disagreements, change your words - here are 4 ways to make your counterpart feel heard and keep the conversation going    

Your 18-year-old daughter announces she’s in love, dropping out of college and moving to Argentina. Your yoga-teaching brother refuses to get vaccinated for COVID-19 and is confident that fresh air is the best medicine. Your boss is hiring another white man for a leadership team already made up entirely of white men.At home, at work and in civic spaces, it’s not uncommon to have conversations that make you question the intelligence and benevolence of your fellow human beings.

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S28
Beavers are the undiscovered engineers of the boreal forest    

Professeur d'écologie forestière, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT) Professeur Écologie Aquatique, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT)

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S6
Are You Failing to Prepare the Next Generation of C-Suite Leaders? - SPONSOR CONTENT FROM DAGGERWING    

For many people leaders, that’s been the mantra for the past three years. “Let’s just get through this moment in time, focus on the short-term solutions for our immediate needs, and when things go back to normal, we’ll deal with all the issues we’ve been putting on the backburner.”

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S26
Kenya at 60: how the British used street names to show colonial power    

Place names, along with other urban symbols, were used as a tool of control over space in many African countries during the colonial period. This strategy was epitomised by the British, who applied it in Nairobi and other parts of Kenya from the late 1800s. Very few African names were used on the urban landscape. This was a strategy to actively alienate the native Africans, who had little or no say in the city’s affairs. Spatially, colonial street names dominated the central part of the city, while African names were used mainly in the peripheral residential neighbourhoods.

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S40
The Harvard of anti-terrorism: how Israel's military-industrial complex feeds the global arms trade    

In The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World, Antony Loewenstein details how Israel’s military-industrial complex has grown from a minor industry into a dominant economic and social force at home and abroad. He traces how, since 1967, the Occupied Territories and their people have furnished Israel with a living laboratory for their application and development of border security and surveillance systems, phone-hacking spyware, tracking and targeting technologies, as well as more traditional weapons systems. Tried and tested in the field, these systems are then packaged and sold for export.

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S39
I'm over 65 and worried about the flu. Which vaccine should I have?    

Influenza, or the flu, is a virus transmitted by respiratory droplets from coughing and sneezing. It can cause the sudden onset of a fever, cough, runny nose, sore throat, headache, muscle and joint pain. In Australia, the flu is responsible for more than 5,000 hospitalisation and 100 deaths a year. The highest rates are among those over 65, whose immune systems aren’t as effective as they used to be, and children under five, whose immune systems are yet to mature.

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S22
AI can replicate human creativity in two key ways - but falls apart when asked to produce something truly new    

Is computational creativity possible? The recent hype around generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT, Midjourney, Dall-E and many others, raises new questions about whether creativity is a uniquely human skill. Some recent and remarkable milestones of generative AI foster this question:An AI artwork, The Portrait of Edmond de Belamy, sold for $432,500, nearly 45 times its high estimate, by the auction house Christie’s in 2018. The artwork was created by a generative adversarial network that was fed a data set of 15,000 portraits covering six centuries.

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S27
Tina Turner: the singer's resilience and defiance were typical of a survivor of intimate partner abuse    

There was something elemental about the ferocity of Tina Turner’s stage strut and the grit in her voice. Her death last week, aged 83, was met with an outpouring of tributes celebrating her musical prowess. But as we mourn her passing, it’s worth noting that Tina was also a model survivor of intimate partner violence.In 1981, following her split from husband Ike Turner, Tina Turner began to speak openly about the years of abuse she had endured during their marriage. No charges related to domestic abuse were ever brought, and Ike Turner denied the accusations. Yet, over the decades Turner told a story familiar and inspiring to many other survivors.

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S43
Closing the First Nations employment gap will take 100 years    

In 2008 Australia’s federal, state and territory governments set the goal of halving the employment gap between First Nations Australians and others within a decade. That required, by 2018, lifting the employment rate for First Nations Australians from 48% to 60%, with the rate for other Australians being 72%.At the 2021 census the employment rate for First Nations Australians was 51%, while the rate for other Australians was 74%.

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S16
US Army Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas' journey from enslaver to Union officer to civil rights defender    

As Southern states tear down Confederate statues and the military removes the names of Confederate generals from bases, the issue of how to remember the Civil War is increasingly prominent. Are white Southerners condemned to think of themselves as the bad guys, the ones who were willing to destroy the Union to preserve slavery? Or are there other types of heritage in which they can take pride?

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S7
Building the AI-Powered Organization    

Artificial intelligence seems to be on the brink of a boom. It’s now guiding decisions on everything from crop harvests to bank loans, and uses like totally automated customer service are on the horizon. Indeed, McKinsey estimates that AI will add $13 trillion to the global economy in the next decade. Yet companies are struggling to scale up their AI efforts. Most have run only ad hoc projects or applied AI in just a single business process.

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S36
Making NZ's tax system fairer is a good idea - but this proposed new law isn't the answer    

It’s no secret that Revenue Minister David Parker has long been interested in tax reform in New Zealand. In 2022, he announced plans for legislation requiring future tax policy changes to be measured against a set of tax principles, notably fairness. The Taxation Principles Reporting Bill, just released for public submissions, is the result of Parker’s ambition. But while it is reasonable to support a tax system that is fairer than the current system, I believe the bill is confusing, unnecessary and pointless.

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S21
West African countries show how decades of working together build peace, and stop wars breaking out    

Africa is often portrayed as a continent ravaged by war, terrorism, poverty and political instability. But over the past five decades few violent conflicts have occurred between states. In Europe, for comparison, there have been more than 25 inter-state conflicts since 1945. It’s true that Africa has seen 214 coups, the most of any region; 106 have been successful. Out of 54 countries on the African continent, 45 have had at least one coup attempt since 1950.

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S20
Free secondary education in African countries is on the rise - but is it the best policy? What the evidence says    

When President Salva Kiir announced the abolition of secondary school fees in South Sudan in February 2023, he was following several fellow African leaders. Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Togo, and Zambia have all announced free secondary education policies in the last five years. Rwanda, Kenya and South Africa were early trendsetters in this regard.

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S19
Kosovo government must take most of the blame for the latest violence, but any long-term solution will require a constructive response from Serbia as well    

Renewed violence in northern Kosovo reminds us that parts of the western Balkan region have a long way to go on the route to recovery from the wars of the 1990s that broke up the former Yugoslavia. Despite decades of western stabilisation efforts, the region remains mired in multiple inter-linked conflicts that are manipulated and exploited by local politicians. Read more: Kosovo: ethnic tensions have created a political 'volcano' that could erupt anytime

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S32
Debate: The end of the internal-combustion car: why competition is vital to bringing about cleaner transport    

On 7 March 2023, just as the European Council was preparing to vote on a ban on the sale of new internal combustion engine cars in Europe from 2035, something went wrong: Germany, whose vote was essential for the measure to be approved, and a coalition of six other European countries blocked the vote on the text, pushing the legislation back indefinitely.A few days later, the European Commission, representing all the member countries, unveiled its response to the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Net-Zero Industry Act, a competitiveness plan based on accelerating the green transition.

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S9
Ask Sanyin: How Can I Field a Winning Team Without All-Star Players?    

My organization urgently needs to execute on a new strategic initiative, but I’m not confident that my current staff members have the skills and drive required. How can I field a championship team when I don’t have any all-star players?It’s easy for managers to succumb to a scarcity mentality and believe that their people aren’t good enough — but it’s important not to nurture this mindset. When we look closely at this problem, we often discover that the existing team’s potential hasn’t yet been fully realized. Building a championship team is almost always a matter of activating untapped potential, not trading for better players.Years ago, my friend Sue Gordon, the former principal deputy director of national intelligence, told me that although you don’t always get to choose your team, your team is enough and you must help them believe that it is so. How do we make the most of who we have rather than fixating on their deficiencies?

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S31
Why 40    

This year, even before the northern hemisphere hot season began, temperature records were being shattered. Spain for instance saw temperatures in April (38.8°C) that would be out of the ordinary even at the peak of summer. South and south-east Asia in particular were hammered by a very persistent heatwave, and all-time record temperatures were experienced in countries such as Vietnam and Thailand (44°C and 45°C respectively). In Singapore, the more modest record was also broken, as temperatures hit 37°C. And in China, Shanghai just recorded its highest May temperature for over a century at 36.7°C.We know that climate change makes these temperatures more likely, but also that heatwaves of similar magnitudes can have very different impacts depending on factors like humidity or how prepared an area is for extreme heat. So, how does a humid country like Vietnam cope with a 44°C heatwave, and how does it compare with dry heat, or a less hot heatwave in even-more-humid Singapore?

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S42
In the 1800s, colonisers attempted to listen to First Nations people. It didn't stop the massacres    

Note of warning: This article refers to deceased Aboriginal people, their words, names and images. Words attributed to them and images in the article are already in the public domain. Also, historical language is used in this article that may cause offence.As we head toward the referendum on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament later this year, it is worth considering the long history of how governments have tried and failed to authentically listen to First Nations people.

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S25
Turkey: what to expect from Erdogan, his ultranationalist alliance and their 'family values' pledges    

After a bitter and hard-fought campaign that went to a second run-off vote, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has retained the Turkish presidency in an election that some deemed as “free but not fair”. Having first won power in 2003, Erdoğan has been able to extend his rule for a further five years by creating an alliance with ultranationalist parties. A key aspect of the next term is likely to be a hardline conservative agenda. An agreement between the Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and his hardline Islamist New Welfare party (YRP) allies has pledged to reevaluate existing laws to “protect the integrity of the family”.

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S23
Meet the EU's answer to crypto: the e-euro    

In a bid to play catch up with technology companies and younger generations of consumers, central banks are finally starting to take digital currencies seriously. Countries such as Sweden, China, and India have establish pilot digital currencies – respectively, the e-krona, e-yuan and e-rupee – via their central banks. In the finance sector, these are known as central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).The purpose, scale and status of such efforts vary considerably. In Sweden, the goal is to investigate the potential transition from banknotes to a digital currency, and the e-krona remains in the starting blocks. In China, the “digital renminbi” started to roll out in 2020, and its goal is to allow the state to better control the retail economy. India launched an e-rupee pilot in 2022 and its purpose is to facilitate a broad range of transactions. Meanwhile, the United States is exploring the potential repercussions of establishing its own digital currency.

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S37
A kiss to detect wine on her breath: the violent policing of women drinking in Ancient Rome    

It was accessible to the masses, a fundamental staple of mainstream life and an indispensable part of the Roman economy and trade. It was utilised in a range of practices: a remedy in medical treatments, a common ingredient in cooking, and customarily used in religious ceremonies as libation to the gods. Despite its centrality to the everyday life of the Romans, the ancient sources continuously attest it was a problematic drink when consumed by women.

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S34
Mr. Associated Press: How 20th-century journalism titan Kent Cooper transformed the news industry    

On the day of Kent Cooper’s funeral in February 1965, the flow of news through the international Associated Press network — the institution he spent a 40-year career building — came to a complete stop. In scores of AP bureaus and thousands of newsrooms around the world, the printers that hammered out the news fell silent.

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S45
The first line of vaccines was highly effective at restricting COVID-19's damage    

Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Health, Kinesiology, and Applied Physiology, Concordia University After more than three years of COVID-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that over 763 million infections, and nearly seven million deaths, have been attributed to SARS-CoV-2.

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S24
Uganda's anti-homosexuality law is a patriarchal backlash against progress    

Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni assented to the anti-homosexuality bill on 26 May 2023. The new law legislates, among other things, a ten-year jail term for “attempted homosexuality”, a 20-year jail term for “promotion of homosexuality”, a life sentence for “the offence of homosexuality” and a death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”. Previously there has been been historical surveillance and targetting of queer people in Uganda, but no penalties nearly as harsh as this.This is reflective of a spate of new laws across Africa. Their proponents argue that they protect the heterosexual African family and “African values” in a rejection of “western norms”.

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S29
Spanish elections: why devastating local losses to the right have forced socialist prime minister Pedro S    

The local and regional elections that took place the 28th May have shaken up the political chessboard in Spain. The right-wing Partido Popular took the largest proportion of votes and now has the largest number of seats in local and regional governments. The socialist PSOE only managed to hold onto two regional governments and will have to make a pact in Navarre with the left-wing Basque nationalist party EH Bildu to stay in power. This debacle marks the beginning of a new epoch. Only three cities out of the 20 most populated now have a socialist mayor’s office. In one fell swoop the socialist party has lost around 70% of the local and regional power it had.

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