A policeman broke his skull in 1965’s “Bloody Sunday” march in Selma, Alabama. But John Lewis survived, going on to serve 17 terms in Congress for his Georgia constituents, additionally struggling against voter suppression, wars, guns and neglect of America’s poor. He learned in December that he had pancreatic cancer, and died Friday at age 80. The son of Alabama sharecroppers, he met Martin Luther King Jr. at age 17, then rose to head the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, instrumental in the civil rights movement. Former President Barack Obama called Lewis a personal hero who “risked his life and blood” to see his nation’s promise fulfilled.
Are black helicopters next? Portland, Oregon, has become the flashpoint of a constitutional crisis, with officers from the Department of Homeland Security detaining #BlackLivesMatter protesters, one of whom said he was locked up in a federal courthouse, asked to waive his right to an attorney, then released after he refused. Mayor Ted Wheeler demanded that they stop, saying, “Keep your troops in your own buildings,” while Oregon’s governor plans legal action. One DHS official admitted to the unmarked vehicles, saying officers were trying to “identify violent rioters and to then pick them up” for federal prosecution.
A BBC headline once declared: “Liberal America panics when she falls ill.” The “she” in question was Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who revealed Friday that she was undergoing chemotherapy for liver cancer. Ginsburg insists that she’ll be working “full steam” nonetheless. The progressive-minded 87-year-old justice has had several health scares, even cancer treatments, but she clearly wants fans to believe she’s not about to yield her lifetime seat to the conservative of President Donald Trump’s choice. Members of Washington’s conservative circles, though, are doubtless imagining what they would accomplish with an ironclad 6-3 majority.
Long before Americans cast their final ballots in the presidential and other races on Nov. 3, a massive battle is shaping up over how and where they do it. President Trump and Republicans allies insist most voters should vote in person despite the pandemic. Republicans in Michigan, which narrowly helped elect Trump, are excoriating the Democratic official who sent absentee primary ballots to all registered voters. In dozens of other states, election officials express confidence in mail-in ballots, despite one very real problem: The Postal Service isn’t ready.
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Global coronavirus cases now exceed 14 million as the U.S. adds a second day of more than 70,000 new infections. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Friday that the government should forgive all pandemic relief small-business loans, regardless of how they’re spent. And Indian film star Aishwarya Rai Bachchan has been hospitalized with COVID-19.
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In his living room, Habib ur-Rahman teaches girls in Badikhel, a village in Afghanistan’s Khost province near Pakistan’s volatile frontier. Grounded by heart issues, the Afghan military pilot conducts classes under the noses of the extremist Taliban who control his village. Some even send their daughters to him to learn. It’s an odd reality in a place where billions of Western dollars have funded “ghost schools” that exist only in government officials’ bank accounts. But while the school demonstrates Taliban leaders’ openness amid peace and power-sharing negotiations, many wonder if that tolerance will depart when the foreign troops do.
When the coronavirus sent South Koreans into isolation, some were more than ready. The honjok subculture is all about being alone and drawing personal boundaries. Participants drop out of the hypercompetitive and strict Korean work culture and choose to not join the rat race or, sometimes, to not participate in marriage and traditional gender roles. As honjok has gained popularity, an economy has sprung up around it, including bars that cater to solo patrons and TV shows about living alone. Now the honjok are showing the nation how the pandemic can be mitigated and endured.
Campi Flegrei, known in English as the Phlegraean Fields, is one of 20 documented “supervolcanoes” on the planet. But the ancient Romans built the luxurious resort city of Baiae smack on top of this fuming time bomb. Now half of Baiae, along with its precious marbles and mosaics, lies beneath the Mediterranean Sea. A team of archaeologists and engineers are working to develop new technologies to protect the underwater site for future generations — or at least until the next violent eruption destroys it all, along with part of nearby Naples.
“We’re lucky to be born now.” That’s how the West Bank’s Sama Abdulhadi feels about her fellow female artists blazing a techno trail through the Middle East, OZY reports. Faced with questions like “Does your father know what you’re doing?” these turntable pioneers find themselves battling both Islamophobia and misogynistic cultural barriers. While Saudi electronic dance music DJ Cosmicat can perform alongside men with her hair showing, it wasn’t long ago that the kingdom’s Sabrina Terence couldn’t play a lounge without being concealed behind a partition. But from that foothold, Abdulhadi says, these artists aim to “open the door for others.”
It was subterranean love. Patricia Crowther helped discover the world’s largest cave network in Kentucky. Her husband, Will Crowther, was heartbroken when the couple parted ways, and he wrote a 1977 text-based adventure game that navigated the same passages he once explored with his ex, writes Claire Evans in Broad Band, a book about female digital pioneers. Today Colossal CaveAdventure is regarded as the seminal digital adventure game, complete with a cheat code, and cavers continue to be amazed at how faithfully it follows the map of Mammoth Cave, which Patricia, also a programmer, helped create.
Fuente de la imagen, Cortesía NETWORK 10/THE PROJECT. Pie de foto, Van der Berg ha pedido a los australianos que ubiquen casas desocupadas y que las...
