Daily-Dose

Contents

• From New Yorker
• From Vox
• From The Hindu: Sports
• From The Hindu: National News
• From BBC: Europe
• From Ars Technica
• From Jokes Subreddit

From New Yorker

• Why Did the Police Shoot Matthew Zadok Williams? - Outside Atlanta, a mother and five sisters look for answers. - link

• What’s Next for the Campaign to Break Up Big Tech? - A judge recently dismissed two antitrust cases against Facebook. But what appeared to be a setback for the effort may actually provide a road map for how it can succeed. - link

• What We Need to Learn from the Tragedy in Surfside - It is possible that South Florida, where climate change is a particularly acute problem, is nearing a point at which even the best-constructed buildings are under threat. - link

• Biden’s Invisible Ideology - The President has deployed an exasperating but effective strategy to counter Trumpism. - link

• Richard Branson’s Plan to Beat Jeff Bezos to Outer Space - The two billionaires have been duelling for years to make commercial space flights a reality. Now, on Sunday, Branson is going himself. - link

From Vox

• How American parents became obsessed with gender -

  

  I’m not the type to throw a gender-reveal party. But like many parents, I still got sucked into the spectacle of the ultrasound.

  When I was pregnant with my first child, I agonized over my decision to find out the sex. I knew that anatomy does not indicate gender identity, but I was also impatient, ready for some forecast, however unreliable, of what the future might hold for me as a mother. Having grown up as a girl in America, I knew what gendered wars I might be up against if I were to have a daughter. I wanted to prepare myself for the fight. At my second-trimester ultrasound, I decided to find out.

  But then things got weird. Nancy, the bubbly sonogram technician, projected the inside of me on a screen that covered an entire wall, dimming the lights, like we were in a movie theater. She kept saying, “That’s a cute baby!” I had no idea what she was looking at as she furiously clicked and numbered and measured different parts of the fuzzy gray blob on the screen. With much excitement, she proclaimed the fetus was a girl. She then printed a three-foot ream of black-and-white pictures, each with an unidentifiable area circled, which she folded and tucked into a white envelope with gold writing that reminded me, again, It’s a Girl!

  It felt like I was supposed to do something with this information. I had never entertained the idea of throwing a gender reveal party, but I still surfed ideas on Pinterest. In one image I found, a couple stood, hands interlocked. Their white clothing, faces, and arms were splattered with pink from a staged paint fight, just one shade away from looking like they committed a murder together. But as I shared the news, there was a lot of excitement that did not line up with how I felt: After receiving one too many frilly infant dresses with animal prints, I quickly prohibited family and friends from giving me gendered clothing. I wondered how I had been sucked into such a clear affirmation of the gender binary.

  American parents love fetal genitalia. This has become more evident with the number of gender reveal parties increasing steadily over the past decade. Usually, it’s more extreme ones that make the news: Such parties have already caused at least four deaths this year, and one burned over 7,000 acres of my home state of California in 2020. Many more go off with less of a bang, like the couple I found on Pinterest getting silly-stringed by friends as the parents kissed, tangled in their boy kid bliss. There are more than 500,000 videos on YouTube like these. It’s safe to say these parents are a little less conflicted about their sonograms than I was.

  Some parents revel in knowing their child’s gender because many still believe prenatal sex is an early indicator of a child’s character. Pregnancy is such a strange state of suspension, any scrutable glimpse of the future is attractive. As Christy Olezeski, director of the Yale Gender Program told me, finding out a child’s prenatal sex can feel like “solving a mystery, a piece of comfort and a way to have an answer about a being [parents] have yet to know and learn about.”

  Ultrasounds satiate that parental curiosity, but they also stoke it. Maybe this is why even parents like myself, who don’t identify as the type to photograph themselves on a deserted road consumed by a bubblegum-pink smoke grenade, cannot help but hem and haw over the decision of whether to find out the fetus’s sex before birth. For pregnant people, the politics of navigating the ultrasound, and the insight it promises, has become its own rite of passage, and it comes with some coercion.

  “There is so much pressure from society,” Olezeski said, “to know the sex of the fetus.”

  ---

  I spoke with nearly 30 parents about their choice to learn their baby’s sex in pregnancy or wait. Some simply wanted to know the sex of their child before birth for practical reasons, like Jenny who identifies as an Ashkenazi Jew. She needed time to prepare for circumcision. She also felt waiting would make the final reveal a bigger deal in the minds of family members, something she wanted to avoid.

  Those who had previously experienced reproductive losses or complications, meanwhile, thought finding out the sex of their baby could provide something beyond medical data, that knowing might lend some certainty to their budding story. Bronwen, a writer then living in the Bay Area, told me she created a whole “pro-con matrix,” analyzing the benefits and downsides of waiting or not. Ultimately, she found out at her ultrasound, hoping it would relieve some of the anxiety she felt after multiple miscarriages. Learning the sex represented “a kind of investment” rather than the “self-protective ‘this is a science experiment’” approach she had taken previously.

  Co-founder of MotherNation Cait Zogby said she and her wife planned not to find out the sex before birth, but when Zogby learned she was pregnant with twins, she and her partner “very comically regressed to the reptilian part of the brain that needed to be reassured of survival. Knowing everything we could about who was in there gave us a sense of control,” however false, she said. She and her wife knew that sex did not correlate to gender, but Zogby was struggling with perinatal depression and felt naming — using family names that happened to be very gendered — was “an added avenue for connection.”

  This idea that the revelation of a baby’s sex can feel like a surprise — welcome or not — is something I heard from many mothers, including those who waited for the big reveal until their baby was born. A Christian mother of four whose husband works in the church told me, “I think it just feels more special waiting longer,” that feeling of “holding your child with the news” is better “than simply being told.”

  When I was pregnant, other women who opted to “wait” to find out the “gender” often repeated to me a similar line as a way to encourage me to do the same: “It is one of the last great surprises in life!” I was troubled by this rationale, which implies there are only two choices: early gratification or delayed. And what exactly is the revelation here? This logic seems to assume that to know the biological sex is to crown the baby as a person. But what does it say about our understanding of personhood that we feel the urge to assign a baby a gender before we can imagine them as human? And why are we so desperate for connection this early in the long game of parenting?

  ---

Our cultural obsession with attempting to identify sex and gender in pregnancy all goes back to the ultrasound, itself born of the sonar technology used to surveil U-boats in World War I and developed further in the next World War. By the 1980s, the surveillance of pregnant people’s bodies had become routine medical practice, as the technology allowed doctors to check for congenital and placental issues. But it also nurtured another embryonic idea: the new vision of the fetus as child.

The ultrasound eventually commingled with capitalism and mainstream psychology to create the color-coded gendered consumerism that has likewise become routine in America. For centuries, white dresses and long hair were the norm for kids under 6 in most Western countries; white clothes were easy to bleach. In the early 20th century, American clothing companies pushed pastels — debating blue for blue-eyed babies, pink for brown-eyed ones, among other arrangements — and by the 1940s, manufacturers and retailers had arbitrarily settled on pink for girls and blue for boys. In the 1980s, clothing corporations saw the information parents gleaned from the sonogram as a chance to expand into a catalog of not just apparel but matching baby gear. Late capitalism took it from there.

The ultrasound also forever transformed the way we think about maternal bonding. In her book The Public Life of the Fetal Sonogram, Janelle Taylor says the idea that the sonogram could help pregnant women learn to love their babies was initially based on a 1982 study led by ultrasound advocate Stuart Campbell, even though the word “bonding” never appears in his study. The study instead examined how the sonogram “influences compliance with health-care recommendations” and how it might change women’s “ambivalent attitudes” about pregnancy. (Interestingly, the study excluded women who were considered high risk, which Taylor suggests shows that the medical community had other interests besides improving maternal health.)

The Campbell study came on the heels of a decade of heated abortion debate. A year later, an unsupported opinion letter written to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine — which suggested that ultrasounds might help women bond with their babies and therefore decide not to abort — further shifted the frame of maternal health, inadvertently spoon-feeding anti- abortionists a new tactic. The wider medical community also began referencing the NEJM letter as a “study” that provided proof of the ultrasound’s magic, investigating how women bond with their babies in pregnancy rather than during childbirth or in the postpartum period.

While 1970s theories of maternal-infant bonding were embraced by the natural birthing movement, maternal-fetal bonding theories rested on the assumption that women — in the era of legalized abortion — couldn’t be trusted to love their babies without the assistance of technology and medical professionals. As Taylor writes, the more radical suggestion was “that emotional and social ties between a mother and child might form in an altogether new manner — not through physical and social interaction, but through spectatorship.”

Anti-abortion legislation, like that in effect in Tennessee and Kentucky, which mandate abortion providers both “display” and “describe” fetal imaging, still use the hyperreality of the ultrasound to strong-arm women into reconsidering their medical decisions. As the late cultural theorist Lauren Berlant argued, the ultrasound elevated the fetus to the level of “supercitizen” — a celebrity whose rights conservatives often argue override the rights of pregnant people.

Today, the 18- to 20-week anatomy scan is recommended for most pregnant people, but all the gender talk is optional. For those with cash to burn (advanced ultrasounds are generally not covered by insurance and can cost up to several hundred dollars), 3D and 4D ultrasound packages promise keepsake images of your fetus in what is obviously pretty dismal lighting. These advanced ultrasounds are considered unsafe by the Food and Drug Administration but are still paired with in-office or out-of-office purchases like DVDs set to music, plush toys that play the fetal heartbeat, custom photo albums, and “sneak peek” blood tests that determine sex as early as nine weeks.

Conversely, there has been some resistance to ultrasounds within the natural birthing movement, primarily framed as a response to unnecessary medical intervention in pregnancy and childbirth. Others just cannot be bothered with the gender spectacle: A woman who asked to be called Anne, a researcher on military and security issues, said she waited to know the sex, hoping to avoid being inundated with pink or blue stuff. She had complications in pregnancy and “had to work hard to remain ignorant.” When her daughter was born, the pink stuff came rolling in anyway.

For Dani McClain — who in her book We Live for the We writes about her experience navigating racial disparities in health care — decisions like whether to trust the white doctor who told her she needed a Caesarean were complex. But the choice to find out her baby’s sex before birth was straightforward, she told me: “I asked the doctors and nurses to not tell me what they were seeing on the ultrasound. I didn’t want to know and didn’t want to deal with other people’s projections about what a baby’s sex means.”

Lillian Rivera, director of family programming at Gender Spectrum, told me many of us engage with cultural norms, like finding out the prenatal sex of our baby, unconsciously. It is often easier to just fall in line — buying into the idea of what is “male” or “female” is comfortable for many, even if we understand the world is not black and white and gender is not assigned at birth or during a sonogram. Even when we know we’re playing out roles that don’t fit us, and that may never fit our children, the ultrasound is now so intricately woven into other cultural practices — like baby showers, decorating the nursery, and gender reveals — we feel compelled by these rites of passage.

In his memoir of nonbinary parenthood, The Natural Mother of the Child, Krys Malcolm Belc writes about his “shame of wanting to know the baby’s sex.” Belc documents his experience finding out his child’s sex in a 4D/HD ultrasound facility that carried “pink and blue frames and souvenirs” — a place that did not reflect his and his partner’s beliefs. As he writes, “The machine told us we could know something this way.” In the end, however, Belc found, “The ultrasound pictures didn’t matter, those words — I’M A BOY — didn’t matter. My mother had a single ultrasound when pregnant with me, and she did not find out whether I was a boy or a girl. What difference would it have made if she did? The image would have been as wrong as the doctor who delivered me.”

We are far from living in a “gender neutral” world, and maybe that is why the “to wait or not to wait” decision to find out the baby’s sex is fraught for so many parents: We sense the ongoing struggle on the horizon. Ultimately, though, as parents, it matters less what we do in the ultrasound appointment or with the “surprise” at birth than what we do with the information we are offered there. Technology cannot teach us to love any more than the first meeting with our baby can. Only moving through the world with our child can do that.

When I was pregnant with my second child, I asked for the morphological details, yet again. I had acquiesced to a lot of mainstream aspects of parenting by then, including those gendered gifts, each of which filled my daughter’s world with suppositions about who she could or could not be. Friends and family had also stopped worrying about my approval: They simply mailed pink clothes, pink dolls, pink clothes for the doll, pink strollers for the well-dressed dolls. I was not untroubled by that, but I had thrown up my hands in some ways, especially as my daughter started to express an interest in feminized things, including dolls. She relished the pretend-play work of care, tending to a filthy, never-clothed baby doll. She covered the baby’s little mythical cuts (which were apparently all over her body) with Band-Aids, wearing a Doc McStuffins coat as doctor. But she soothed her baby’s silent cries dressed plainly, lugging bags filled with indiscriminate collections of stuff, as Mom.

As she began the hard work of identifying with the world of gender, my daughter also discounted some gendered norms all on her own. For years, she was totally uninterested in pink. And when, at the grocery store, strangers said, “Hi, princess,” she gripped me. “Mommy,” she would say. “I’m not a princess. Why do they always call me that?”

“I don’t know,” I would say. But I did.

My daughter came with me to my second ultrasound appointment, her body tumbling on my face as the technician studied what she saw. The aesthetics of this ultrasound were more subdued; the room was cold, small, and dimly lit so we could see the television-size screen next to the table. My daughter had brought a dirty, yellow stuffed duck, which she now waved around for her sibling to see. “Look my ducky,” she said, imagining her sibling as baby, as friend. Neither of us knew that child yet, but my daughter was sure that we would.

• Richard Branson’s trip to space is about convincing others to come along -

  

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The Virgin Group founder is taking another step toward making space tourism a reality.

British businessman and billionaire Richard Branson has tried a lot of things in his life, from crossing the Atlantic by powerboat in record time to attempting to travel the world via hot air balloon (before crash landing). But his upcoming feat might be his most notable yet: traveling to space — and possibly beating fellow billionaire and space startup founder Jeff Bezos in the process.

This Sunday morning, Branson will join five other people on Virgin Galactic’s first full-crewed flight to space. If all goes according to plan, they’ll travel more than 50 miles above the Earth’s surface on the VSS Unity spaceplane, an airplane-like vehicle that will be carried by a mothership before reaching what NASA considers to be the border between outer space and Earth. The goal is to demonstrate that space tourism really is possible, and during the estimated 90-minute trip, riders will experience weightlessness and see stunning views of Earth.

The company is planning to livestream the flight on its website, as well as on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, beginning at 9 am ET.

Space tourism has long been an aspiration of Branson’s. The British businessman, whose terrestrial ventures through the Virgin Group include everything from a record company to air travel, founded Virgin Galactic back in 2004, just as the private space industry was starting to become competitive. In 2000, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin, and two years later, Elon Musk founded SpaceX. For more than a decade, these private companies have been racing each other, launching test flights and preparing to send humans — including civilians — to space. At the same time, NASA has increasingly turned to these private space firms for its own work, including help with delivering payloads, training astronauts, and even returning to the moon.

“If you’re going to get people to pay to do this, most people aren’t going to pay to do that if there’s a relatively good chance that they’re going to die,” Janet Bednarek, an aviation historian at the University of Dayton, told Recode. “I think that’s in part why Branson is going on this flight. It’s signaling that this is now safe.”

If Branson successfully launches on Sunday, it will be a new milestone for Virgin Galactic, and one that will move humanity even closer to the age of commercial space tourism.

While SpaceX and Blue Origin have a range of other goals, including delivering payloads to the International Space Station, Virgin Galactic has stood out for its long- time focus on space tourism: the idea that people will be willing to dole out a lot of money for the opportunity to travel to space. “We hope to create thousands of astronauts over the next few years and bring alive their dream of seeing the majestic beauty of our planet from above, the stars in all their glory, and the amazing sensation of weightlessness,” Branson proclaimed back in 2004.

At the time, Branson predicted the company could send five-person trips to space for just $200,000, and that thousands of astronauts could be sent to space in the coming years. In 2019, Virgin Galactic became the first space tourism firm to go public, and in June, the company received the first-ever operator license from the Federal Aviation Administration, meaning that it now has permission to fly paying customers. Branson has also launched Virgin Orbit, a parallel company that launches satellites, where SpaceX is also competing.

Sunday’s launch will mean Branson and Virgin Galactic have come out ahead of Bezos and Musk in the private space race. While Branson has insisted he’s not trying to beat Bezos and Blue Origin to get to space first, he did announce his July 11 flight just hours after the Amazon CEO said he would take off on July 20. Bezos seems at least slightly piqued by Branson changing his launch date: On Friday, Blue Origin questioned whether Sunday’s Virgin Galactic flight will really make it to space, since the flight isn’t technically crossing the internationally recognized border, the Kármán line, about 12 miles higher than the NASA-recognized border.

Virgin Galactic’s journey to commercial space tourism has had its share of serious setbacks. In 2014, a test flight of the company’s SpaceShipTwo crashed, killing one co- pilot and leaving the other seriously injured. (The National Transportation Safety Board later attributed the crash to a co-pilot error and “failure to consider and protect against the possibility that a single human error could result in a catastrophic hazard.”) The Virgin Group, the broader conglomerate that includes the airline Virgin Atlantic and the gym Virgin Active, have also had to overcome the financial challenges of the pandemic.

The space flight effort faces the question of profitability too. “There’s a limited number of people who can actually afford to do this,” Bednarek told Recode. “If you’re going to go to scale, you also have to figure out how to bring the cost down, and that’s very difficult to do.”

Earlier this month, Branson said he thinks there’s enough demand for space travel for at least 20 different companies to compete in the industry. Thus far, the company says at least 600 people have made reservations for future Virgin Galactic flights, at a ticket price estimated to cost as much as $250,000. Last year, Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said he thought the company could eventually bring in $1 billion a year in revenue and make spaceflight happen regularly, though he noted that the company would need more space planes and motherships to reach that goal.

And even if we’re still a ways off from widespread space tourism, Branson will soon have company: In just a few days, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is scheduled to journey to space for about 11 minutes in a BlueOrigin rocket, alongside other riders, including his brother Mark Bezos and a still-unnamed auction winner who bid $28 million for a seat on the flight.

SpaceX, meanwhile, is scheduled to launch its first “all-civilian” flight later this year. On board will be pilot and billionaire tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who founded the payments processor company Shift4Payments.

Only a few hundred humans have been to space, but that number seems to be accelerating pretty quickly.

• What the assassination of Haiti’s president means for US foreign policy -

  

  America and Haiti’s complex relationship, explained

  The assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moise has sent the country into shock and turmoil, sparking discussions in the international community on how to help bring stability. But Haiti’s long history of foreign involvement can’t be ignored, nor can the fact that often, aid was provided whether or not Haiti itself benefitted.

  On Wednesday, July 7, President Moise was shot 16 times when Hatian officials allege a group of “professional killers’’ stormed his home in a suburb located near Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital city. Prime Minister Claude Joseph assumed leadership and promptly declared a two-week state of siege in the country in an attempt to control backlash. However Joseph’s authority is being questioned by some as President Moise had declared Ariel Henry the new Prime Minister only two days before his assassination. Henry was meant to be sworn in this past week. Complicating the issue is the fact that Haiti currently has two conflicting constitutions that give different instructions on what to do when the president is no longer in power.

  Moise’s hunger for power defined his presidency

  Moise himself had a tumultuous presidency beginning in 2017, highlighted by his authoritarian tactics and inability to gain the Haitain people’s trust. Soon after he was elected, Moise revived the nation’s army which had been disbanded two decades before. This was a controversial decision in a country still dealing with the aftermath of its catastrophic 2010 earthquake, stoking fears that the army would drain already limited resources. Further skepticism came from the army’s history of human rights abuses and the multiple coups it carried out. The decision to bring the army back set the tone for Moise’s presidency as he continuously prioritized his interests and power over those of the people. In the absence of a functioning legislature, Haitian law allows the President to rule by decree, and in January 2020, Moise refused to hold Parliamentary elections and dismissed all of the country’s elected mayors, consolidating his power.

  Further exacerbating problems, in February Moise refused to leave office despite legal experts and members of an opposition coalition claiming that his term ended on February 7th. Moise claimed that his presidency was meant to last until 2022, due to a delay in the 2017 election, and his refusal to step down led to mass anger and frustration culminating in public protests and chants of “no to dictatorship”.

  While the identity of the killers has not been confirmed, speculation seems to be determined by party alignment. Moise supporters have stated that he was shot by a predominantly Colombian group of hitmen while some opposition politicians claim that he was killed by his own guards. Others have said that the Colombians were hired as personal guards to protect Moise from external threats. Fifteen Colombian suspects are currently in custody along with two Hatian-American suspects, and others still believed to be at large.

  Haiti’s current call for intervention is reminiscent of its past

  Moise’s assassination leaves Haiti with an unstable government and an increasingly frustrated population. In addition to the current state of siege implemented by Prime Minister Joseph, Haiti’s interim government has formally requested the US to send security assistance to protect infrastructure including Haiti’s seaport, airport, and gasoline reserves as a precautionary measure. During a briefing Friday, Press Secretary Jen Psaki offered measured support from the White House, saying, “we will be sending senior FBI and DHS officials to Port-au-Prince as soon as possible to assess the situation and how we may be able to assist.”

  It remains to be seen how the Biden administration will react but if US troops are sent to Haiti it could begin to feel like political deja vu. Haiti has a long history of American military intervention.

  Foreign intervention in Haiti has often worsened the situation

  The United States’ involvement began as early as the 1790s, when it provided support to French colonists in an effort to subdue revolting groups of enslaved Haitians. As the revolution grew, so did US hostility toward Haiti, fearing that the revolutionary discourse would spread to the enslaved population in the US. And although Haiti gained independence in 1804, the United States did not recognize it as an independent nation until 1862.

  This attitude towards Haiti drastically changed in 1915, after President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was assassinated a few months after he entered office due to his authoritarian rule and repressive actions. In the face of heightened turmoil, President Woodrow Wilson sent US Marines into Haiti to build the nation back up and restore political and economic stability. However the military occupation lasted for nearly 20 years during which time the US controlled parts of the country’s government and finances. In 1917 the Wilson administration tried to force a new constitution onto the Hatian government that would allow foreign land ownership which had been prohibited as a way to protect domestic resources and prevent foreign powers from taking control.

  A more recent intervention occurred in 1994 when the US sent troops to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide to presidency and neutralize the militant group that had overthrown him and taken power. Known as Operation Restore Democracy, the intervention was ultimately successful since Aristide returned to the presidency but questions about the longevity of the operation and if US involvement was necessary linger to this day.

  “The intervention in Haiti was a short-lived success,” James Dobbins, a US Special Envoy during the operation told Time Magazine. “Haiti illustrated that these things take a long time — they don’t transform a society overnight.”

  In fact, foreign interventions have a record of transforming Haitian society but not necessarily in a good way. In the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake that struck Haiti and killed over 200,000 people, the United Nations deployed peacekeepers to assist with rebuilding efforts. However, that following October, sewage from a peacekeeping base contaminated a major water supply causing a cholera outbreak. In an economy already weakened by the earthquake, and with health and sanitation facilities severely underfunded, the outbreak was disastrous, affecting almost 800,000 Haitians and killing approximately 10,000 people. It took the UN six years to admit to its responsibility.

  In the wake of Moise’s assassination, many questions remain about the role of the US, including how to successfully effect long-lasting change.

  Robert Fatton, a Haitian-born historian and political science professor at the University of Virginia spoke to Time Magazine about the harm that international involvement in Haiti has caused. “[After the intervention], Haiti became a country dependent on international financial organizations for its funding, its budget — it was and still is at the mercy of what the international community is willing to give,” he said.

From The Hindu: Sports

• Queen pens letter to England football team ahead of big Euro Cup final - The 95-year-old monarch recalls the country’s last big win in the game 55 years ago when England won the World Cup under Bobby Moore as captain.

• Missed natural feeling of being in world-class event but staying positive for Tokyo, says Neeraj Chopra - “I did not get good international competitions when I wanted and there had to be several changes in training and competition schedule.”

• Messi played Copa America final with injury, says coach - Coach Lionel Scaloni did not say what the injury was but he showered Messi with praise on his first victory with the national side.

• How a Yoga trainer from Kerala helped resurgence of former world No. 1 tennis player Angelique Kerber - A yoga trainer from Kerala had something to cheer about when German Tennis Player Angelique Kerber made a comeback after three years to play semi-fina

• Argentina beats Brazil to win Copa America - Argentina’s win was a particular triumph for Barcelona striker Lionel Messi, who picked up his first ever title in a blue and white shirt after more than a decade of club and individual honours.

From The Hindu: National News

• Four abandoned children rescued in Bhubaneswar - Hit by the pandemic, Childline surveyed 3,000 street children in urgent need of food in central Bhubaneswar alone

• New population policy drafted keeping in mind all sections society: Adityanath - The provisions would come into force one year after the date of publication of the gazette, the draft says.

• Maoists demand release of new job calendar by State government - ‘During padayatra Jagan had promised to fill 2.3 lakh jobs to solve unemployment problem’

• Two injured as celebrations over Argentina’s win spill over to roads in Kerala’s Malappuram - Youngsters suffer severe burns from crackers

• PDF extends support to relay fast by steel plant employees against privatisation - ‘A resolution passed in the Assembly on the issue was not sent to Council’

From BBC: Europe

• Football-mad Italians gear up for big night - Italy’s success in the Euro competition has lifted spirits after the pandemic, Mark Lowen reports.

• Pope Francis leads prayers from hospital balcony after colon surgery - Francis thanks well-wishers from his hospital balcony following treatment for a colon problem.

• Portugal orders house arrest for Benfica football club president - Luís Filipe Vieira is being investigated in Portugal for suspected tax fraud and money laundering.

• Cannes: Actress Lea Seydoux tests positive for Covid-19 - The James Bond star may miss the French film festival after contracting the virus.

• Esther Bejarano: Auschwitz orchestra member dies - Esther Bejarano survived in Auschwitz by playing in the death camp’s orchestra.

From Ars Technica

• The weekend’s best tech deals: Nintendo Switch Lite, MacBook Air, and more - Dealmaster also has deals on Dell monitors, good board games, and portable SSDs. - link

• When science breaks bad: A rogues’ gallery of history’s worst scientists - A new book catalogs some of the greatest ethical lapses done in the name of science. - link

• Quest for “green” cement draws big name investors to $300B industry - Startups and venture capitalists are joining concrete makers against a hard problem. - link

• Feds indict “The Bull” for allegedly selling insider stock info on the dark web - Data allegedly sold individually or through weekly or monthly subscriptions. - link

• Cheat-maker brags of computer-vision auto-aim that works on “any game” - Capture cards, input hardware, and machine learning get around system-level lockdowns. - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• Mother superior tells two new nuns that they have to paint their room without getting any paint on their clothes. One nun suggests to the other, “Hey, let’s take all our clothes off, fold them up, and lock the door.” -

  So they do this, and begin painting their room. Soon they hear a knock at the door. They ask, “Who is it?” “Blind man!” The nuns look at each other and one nun says, “He’s blind, so he can’t see. What could it hurt?” They let him in. The blind man walks in and says, “Hey, nice tits. Where do you want me to hang the blinds?”

  submitted by /u/littleboy_xxxx
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• This priest decided to skip church one sunday morning and go play golf -

  He told his assistant that he wasn’t feeling well. He drove to a golf course in another city, so nobody would know him.

  He teed off on the first hole. A huge gust of wind caught his ball, carried is an extra hundred yards and dropped it right in the hole, for a 450 yard hole in one.

  An angel looked at God and said “What’d you do that for?” God smiled and said “Who’s he going to tell?”

  submitted by /u/MichaelK24
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• How to fall down the stairs -

  Step 1.

  Step 2.

  Step 3.

  Step 6.

  Step 11.

  Step 16.

  Floor.

  submitted by /u/Plague001
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• A blind man’s big penis -

  A blind man was always turned down by women because of his disability. He knew one thing though, that he had an abnormally large erection. Knowing he couldn’t successfully have a relationship, and use his hammer properly, he asked one of his dear friends to bring him to “pleasure palace”, a local sex facility.

  They go to the place and his friend says to the woman behind the desk, without his blind friend hearing, “my friend here is blind, but he claims you will not be disappointed.” So the woman agrees and brings him into a room. She pulls his pants down and wows about his erection. She knew she couldn’t handle it so she brought in another woman. She couldn’t handle it and told the boss. The boss comes in to take a look at it and tells the blind mans friend to take him somewhere else. He only knew one other place to find a vagina big enough to fulfill his wishes. So he took him to your mothers house.

  submitted by /u/VaJohnny
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• A boss said to his secretary, "I want to have sex with you, but I will make it very fast. -

  I’ll throw $1,000 on the floor and by the time you bend down to pick it up, I’ll be done."

  She thought for a moment then called her boyfriend and told him the story. Her boyfriend said, “Do it but ask him for $2,000. Then pick up the money so fast, he won’t even have enough time to undress himself.” She agrees.

  After half an hour passes, the boyfriend calls the girlfriend and asks, “So what happened?” She responds, “The …bastard…..used …..coins”

  submitted by /u/littleboy_xxxx
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