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Perhaps the oldest, most pernicious form of human bias is that of men toward women. It often started at the moment of birth. In ancient Athens, at a public ceremony called the amphidromia, fathers would inspect a newborn and decide whether it would be part of the family, or be cast away. One often socially acceptable reason for abandoning the baby: It was a girl.

Female infanticide has been distressingly common in many societies — and its practice is not just ancient history. In 1990, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen looked at birth ratios in Asia, North Africa, and China and calculated that more than 100 million women were essentially “missing” — meaning that, based on the normal ratio of boys to girls at birth and the longevity of both genders, there was a huge missing number of girls who should have been born, but weren’t. Good News

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Sen’s estimate came before the truly widespread adoption of ultrasound tests that could determine the sex of a fetus in utero — which actually made the problem worse, leading to a wave of sex-selective abortions. These were especially common in countries like India and China; the latter’s one-child policy and old biases made families desperate for their one child to be a boy. The Economist has estimated that since 1980 alone, there have been approximately 50 million fewer girls born worldwide than would naturally be expected, which almost certainly means that roughly that nearly all of those girls were aborted for no other reason than their sex. The preference for boys was a bias that killed in mass numbers. Related

The big barrier to having children we’re not talking about

But in one of the most important social shifts of our time, that bias is changing. In a great cover story earlier this month, The Economist reported that the number of annual excess male births has fallen from a peak of 1.7 million in 2000 to around 200,000, which puts it back within the biologically standard birth ratio of 105 boys for every 100 girls. Countries that once had highly skewed sex ratios — like South Korea, which saw almost 116 boys born for every 100 girls in 1990 — now have normal or near-normal ratios.

Altogether, The Economist estimated that the decline in sex preference at birth in the past 25 years has saved the equivalent of 7 million girls. That’s comparable to the number of lives saved by anti-smoking efforts in the US. So how, exactly, have we overcome a prejudice that seemed so embedded in human society? Related

The movement desperately trying to get people to have more babies

Success in school and the workplace

For one, we have relaxed discrimination against girls and women in other ways — in school and in the workplace. With fewer limits, girls are outperforming boys in the classroom. In the most recent international PISA tests, considered the gold standard for evaluating student performance around the world, 15-year-old girls beat their male counterparts in reading in 79 out of 81 participating countries or economies, while the historic male advantage in math scores has fallen to single digits.

Girls are also dominating in higher education, with 113 female students at that level for every 100 male students. While women continue to earn less than men, the gender pay gap has been shrinking, and in a number of urban areas in the US, young women have actually been outearning young men.

Government policies have helped accelerate that shift, in part because they have come to recognize the serious social problems that eventually result from decades of anti-girl discrimination. In countries like South Korea and China, which have long had some of the most skewed gender ratios at birth, governments have cracked down on technologies that enable sex-selective abortion. In India, where female infanticide and neglect have been particularly horrific, slogans like “Save the Daughter, Educate the Daughter” have helped change opinions. A changing preference

The shift is being seen not just in birth sex ratios, but in opinion polls — and in the actions of would-be parents.

Between 1983 and 2003, The Economist reported, the proportion of South Korean women who said it was “necessary” to have a son fell from 48 percent to 6 percent, while nearly half of women now say they want daughters. In Japan, the shift has gone even further — as far back as 2002, 75 percent of couples who wanted only one child said they hoped for a daughter.

In the US, which allows sex selection for couples doing in-vitro fertilization, there is growing evidence that would-be parents prefer girls, as do potential adoptive parents. While in the past, parents who had a girl first were more likely to keep trying to have children in an effort to have a boy, the opposite is now true — couples who have a girl first are less likely to keep trying. A more equal future

There’s still more progress to be made. In northwest of India, for instance, birth ratios that overly skew toward boys are still the norm. In regions of sub-Saharan Africa, birth sex ratios may be relatively normal, but post-birth discrimination in the form of poorer nutrition and worse medical care still lingers. And course, women around the world are still subject to unacceptable levels of violence and discrimination from men.

And some of the reasons for this shift may not be as high-minded as we’d like to think. Boys around the world are struggling in the modern era. They increasingly underperform in education, are more likely to be involved in violent crime, and in general, are failing to launch into adulthood. In the US, 20 percent of American men between 25 and 34 still live with their parents, compared to 15 percent of similarly aged women. Related

Are men okay? Our modern masculinity problem, explained.

It also seems to be the case that at least some of the increasing preference for girls is rooted in sexist stereotypes. Parents around the world may now prefer girls partly because they see them as more likely to take care of them in their old age — meaning a different kind of bias against women, that they are more natural caretakers, may be paradoxically driving the decline in prejudice against girls at birth.

But make no mistake — the decline of boy preference is a clear mark of social progress, one measured in millions of girls’ lives saved. And maybe one Father’s Day, not too long from now, we’ll reach the point where daughters and sons are simply children: equally loved and equally welcomed.

Excerpts:

The Facebook message that popped into her account started as a flirtation: "Hey, how are you?" 

She had newly arrived from Bangladesh to study for her master's in information technology on a student visa in 2022 and wasn't interested in a relationship. 

She liked the message. Then he texted again a few days later, "Hey, I have tickets to a Broadway show."  

She had never been to a Broadway show before, so she went — and their whirlwind first date quickly turned to love for her and then marriage. […]

Her new husband filed for a green card for his wife. A temporary one was granted, and she moved to his family's house in Brooklyn.

The future seemed bright. […]

Now, just a little more than a year later, the 31-year-old woman, who asked CBS News not to use her name due to safety fears, has separated from her husband after alleging abuse — and is now worried about being deported.

[…]

Crystal Justice, chief external affairs officer at the National Domestic Violence Hotline, told CBS News in a statement that they have seen abusive partners "threatening to deport a partner or their family or withholding legal documents to limit a person's ability to travel."

Full story on CBS News

The Israeli military says Iran launched dozens of ballistic missiles at Israel as sirens and loud blasts were heard in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Minutes later, a massive cloud of smoke rose over Tel Aviv. According to Iranian media, hundreds of ballistic missiles were launched from Iran toward Israel, marking Tehran's initial response to the intense Israeli attacks.

Israel launched a major attack on Iran, drawing their long-running shadow war into the open conflict in a way that could spiral into a wider, more dangerous regional war.

The strikes early Friday set off explosions in the capital of Tehran as Israel said it was targeting Iranian nuclear and military facilities. Iranian state media reported that the leader of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and two top nuclear scientists had been killed.

archived (Wayback Machine)

related:

• Will Brazil’s President Lula wake up to the climate crisis?
• On Amazon destruction, will Brazil President Lula's ‘disinformation space’ be penetrated?

Shots fired—that is how observers described the landmark legal decision in late May in a case brought by a Peruvian farmer against a German coal giant, that ruled fossil fuel producers could be held accountable under German law for the climate harms they have caused around the world. It was a groundbreaking moment, a decade in the making, that began in 2015 when Saul Lucian Lliuya realized he had a problem: the constant threat of catastrophic flooding he and the other 120,000 residents of his hometown, Huaraz, faced. Above Huaraz sits Lake Palcacocha, one of several glacier lakes that supplies the city’s drinking water. Over decades, water levels have occasionally risen, but as global average temperatures have increased, the surrounding glaciers have shrunk, pushing the lake to capacity and the point where a catastrophic flood is now inevitable.

None of this happened by chance. Pointing to the science that climate change was being driven by fossil fuel production, the Peruvian farmer from a city in the foothills of the Andes set out to do something ambitious: sue German coal-fired power producer RWE for its part in helping to drive catastrophic climate change. Few thought the case would last as long as it did, and when the court issued its historic ruling in May, headlines in major international papers reported it as a loss. What they missed is that Lliuya had succeeded in laying a blueprint for others looking to take fossil fuel companies to court.

The story of Huaraz is a familiar one to many communities in the Global South. A lack of action by governments and international institutions has meant there are precious few avenues available to find the money and resources needed for adaptation and mitigation. Some estimates put the level of compensation owed by developed economies to Global South countries for their role in driving catastrophic climate change at US$192 trillion. At the COP in Baku, Azerbaijan last year, the annual UN climate summit, governments pledged $300bn, a fraction of what is needed, and the latest in a string of pledges that have remained unfulfilled.

Suing those directly responsible offers a way to both hold companies to account and to secure the resources needed to mitigate emissions, and adapt to climate harms as they develop. These legal efforts have been aided by the development of rapid and more advanced attribution science that makes it possible to link individual fossil fuel producers to specific climate harms.

But then, Lliuya’s claim was never really about the money. At heart was a demand RWE pay 0.47% of the cost of a new dam for his city, a figure estimated at USD$4m and a sum that came to roughly USD$20,000 for RWE’s contribution – a rounding error on the company’s balance sheet.

Both Lliuya and RWE’s lawyers, however, understood there was something bigger at stake. When asked by the court if RWE would be willing to settle, the company’s lawyers refused.

“This is a matter of precedent,” they said.

When the court’s decision was handed down on 28 May 2025, while the judges didn’t require RWE to pay up for the dam, they did side with Lliuya on all the key questions of law. The ruling held that German courts do have authority to hear civil claims for climate harms arising from impacts from climate change. A Peruvian could, in fact, sue in German courts under the law of nuisance if it could be shown a German had caused harm to his property – even if said property was on the other side of the world. This was partly due to provisions within German law that require neighbors to consider how their actions affect each other, ruling “the plaintiff is not obliged to tolerate” a disturbance to his property. It also rejected any suggestion Lliuya was “co-responsible” for potential harm simply by living in an at-risk area.

In other words, says Petra Minnerop, a professor of international law at Durham university, the decision means that someone in Tuvalu whose home is affected by sea level rise, or a person in Pakistan whose home is destroyed in a catastrophic flood could potentially sue for climate harms – within certain limits.

archived (Wayback Machine)

Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal (TK) has ruled that European Union energy and climate regulations are incompatible with the Polish constitution and breach national sovereignty in determining energy policy.

The Tribunal found that EU institutions, including the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), had exceeded their competences by interpreting EU treaties in a way that significantly impacts Poland’s ability to choose its energy sources independently.

Interpretations of EU law “cannot mean that Poland loses control over the scope of its delegated competences, and thus that there are areas in which its sovereignty (here: energy) is not protected”, the court said in a statement announcing its decision.

However, the ruling is unlikely to have any real effect for now given that the current government, a coalition led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, does not recognise the TK’s legitimacy due to it containing judges unlawfully appointed by the former Law and Justice (PiS) administration.

The case was brought by a group of opposition lawmakers led by Sebastian Kaleta, a PiS MP and former deputy justice minister. The motion challenged the compatibility of EU climate rules – including Directive 2003/87/EC, which created the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) – with the Polish constitution.

The MPs argued that, although Poland had transferred some powers to Brussels, it should retain sovereignty over critical energy decisions. They claimed that mandatory participation in the EU ETS restricts economic freedom and undermines the state’s ability to ensure energy security.

They also warned that EU decision-making processes, which do not require unanimity in the European Council on issues affecting Poland’s energy mix, might breach the limits of competence conferred on the EU and undermine the primacy of the Polish constitution.

In its ruling, the TK agreed with the motion’s core arguments. It held that the CJEU had extended the interpretation of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union beyond the conferred competences, infringing on national sovereignty.

“Competences not conferred on the European Union belong to the member states themselves, and the EU can only act on the basis of the principle of subsidiarity, subject to the scrutiny of national parliaments at all times,” the court said.

Consequently, the TK found this interpretation of EU law to be incompatible with the Polish constitution, emphasising that Poland cannot lose control over the scope of delegated powers, especially in such a key area as energy sovereignty.

The TK, however, discontinued proceedings relating specifically to the ETS “due to the incomplete, from a formal point of view, definition of the object under verification”.

The TK concluded its statement by stating that it was now up to the Polish legislature and executive to take “appropriate public law measures” to implement the decision, which enters into force upon its publication.

However, it is the government that is responsible for publishing TK rulings, and it refuses to do so due to given that some of the tribunal’s judges were illegitimately appointed under PiS.

The ruling could still reverberate in Polish politics, however. The PiS-aligned president-elect, Karol Nawrocki, who takes office in August, said last month that the TK’s decision on this case could be a way to lower the electricity prices by 33% – one of his campaign promises.

He also pledged to hold a referendum on withdrawing from the EU’s Green Deal – a set of policies aimed at reaching climate neutrality by 2050 – and reaffirmed his support for coal, which remains Poland’s main source of electricity generation and is also widely used for heating homes.

PiS politicians welcomed the verdict, insisting that it means that Poland does not have to implement the Green Deal.

“The EU has not been given the competence to decide without the consent of Poland which energy sources we can use and what fiscal burdens may be imposed on individual sources,” Kaleta wrote on X. “This opens the path for a radical reduction in electricity and heating prices now.”

The former justice minister in the PiS government, Zbigniew Ziobro, meanwhile, challenged Tusk, asking if he would “break the law again and hide the verdict to drive Poles into poverty” or “will you behave as you should?”

The government has so far not commented on the TK’s ruling.

The Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency yesterday launched a certification scheme aimed at contributing to global efforts to conserve 30 percent of the Earth’s terrestrial and aquatic areas by 2030.

The Terrestrial Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (OECM) certification is part of efforts to meet the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework’s goal, dubbed the “30 by 30” target.

Agency Director-General Lin Hwa-ching (林華慶) told a news conference that protected areas and OECMs are recognized as effective conservation that can add up to the target.

Joachim Streit has never stepped foot in Canada. But that hasn’t stopped the German politician from launching a tenacious, one-man campaign that he readily describes as “aspirational”: to have the North American country join the EU.

“We have to strengthen the European Union,” said Streit, who last year was elected as a member of the European parliament. “And I think Canada – as its prime minister says – is the most European country outside of Europe.”

Streit had long imagined Canada as a sort of paradise, home to dense forests that course with wide, rushing rivers. But after Donald Trump returned to power, launching much of the world into a trade war and turning his back on America’s traditional allies, Streit began to cast the northern country in a new light.

What he saw was a relatively unexplored relationship, one that could prove mutually beneficial as the world grapples with rapidly reshaping global dynamics. “Canadians have seen their trust in the US undermined, just as we have in Europe, following President Trump’s actions,” he said. “We need to strengthen the ties that bind us to our friends.”

While I get the rationale, I can't help but think that if this currently aspirational idea actually takes hold, the net result would be the militarization of our northern border.

I can't really see Van der Leyen approving such an expansion, especially given it would bring a Commonwealth territory into the EU post-Brexit.

archive.is link

More passengers shuttling between China’s two biggest cities are choosing to hop on a bullet train rather than a flight, as airlines struggle to match the convenience offered by the country’s ultra-modern high-speed rail network.

The shift to rail has become so pronounced on the busy Beijing-Shanghai route that China’s air travel industry has warned its market is being “eroded”, with airlines scrambling to lure back customers with cheaper tickets and free limousine services.

Passengers made more than 52 million trips by train between Beijing and Shanghai last year, while only about 8.6 million people took a flight between the two cities, according to civil aviation platform Hangban Guanjia.

More than 100 high-speed trains now run between Beijing and Shanghai in both directions each day at speeds of up to 350km/h (217 mph), most of them comprising 16 to 17 carriages including first- and business-class cabins.

The profitability and high usage rate on the Beijing-Shanghai line offers a stark contrast to some other Chinese railways. Many lines in the country’s sparsely populated central and western provinces run at heavy losses.

Business travellers make up a particularly large proportion of rail passengers, Tong Lijun, deputy chief of Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station, told domestic media outlet Jiefang Daily.

“They favour many conveniences rail transport can offer but air travel cannot, such as good punctuality, city centre-to-city centre connectivity, reliable services even during unstable weather, and the flexibility to change departure times,” Tong said.

“Many tend to avoid air travel since having to go offline on a flight can be a deal-breaker, as they need to make full use of the journey to stay connected and do some work,” he added.

A new low for the IDF. The US and Israel decided to start their humanitarian aid org so that Hamas would get less positive PR. They placed their distribution center behind IDF lines. Everyone including the UN said this was a terrible idea. Predictably, IDF has opened fire on people trying to travel to the humanitarian aid center. At least 27 people died.

"Wealthy tourists travel here from across the world to receive illegal, but life-saving kidney transplants. The donors receive less than £2000 for donating their organs."

In the early hours of April 7, 2024, Israeli forces stormed the homes of 25-year-old Layan Kayed in Ramallah and 23-year-old Layan Nasir in Birzeit, both located in the occupied West Bank. The two women were arrested at gunpoint and placed in “administrative detention” without charges.

Nasir’s family said that the soldiers offered no explanation or indication of what charges were being brought against her. They didn’t need to: Under “administrative detention,” Israeli authorities can arrest a person even before any crime has been committed, and without revealing the nature of the allegations. Once arrested in this way, a prisoner can be held in administrative detention in six-month stints that can be renewed again and again without charge or trial. At the beginning of April 2025, there were almost 3,500 Palestinians held in administrative detention, according to Addameer, a Ramallah-based nongovernmental organization that supports Palestinian political prisoners. Among these thousands are minors, journalists, activists and human rights defenders.

Near the end of April 2024, the Israeli military told international media that Nasir had been arrested based on intelligence that suggested she “poses a security threat.” No further details were given to her family. Kayed and Nasir were held in administrative detention without charge in Damon Prison, across the border in Israel, until their release eight months later.

According to Addameer and the United Kingdom-based organization Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, both women had previously been arrested and detained when they were students at Birzeit University — Kayed in 2020 and Nasir in 2021. Alongside other female university students, they had been charged with participating in and affiliating with a student group that Israel had deemed a terrorist organization.

Since Hamas’ terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023, Palestinians in the West Bank like Kayed and Nasir have been targeted by Israel’s heightened militarization and subjected to increased surveillance, mass arrests and abuse. In April 2024, the Palestinian Authority’s Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs said that Israeli raids on homes of former female detainees in the West Bank have become a daily occurrence as part of a strategy of retaliation and revenge against women and girls. The Israel Defense Forces denies this claim. An IDF spokesperson told me that there has been “a significant increase in terrorist attacks” in the West Bank since October 7 and that the IDF has been conducting “counter-terrorism operations against the Hamas terrorist organization, to protect the State of Israel.” The spokesperson emphasized that the IDF “operates in a targeted and precise manner” and does not “seek to obstruct the daily lives of Palestinian civilians.”

Right-wing opposition presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki has won Poland’s presidential election, official results show. With 100% of districts having reported results, Nawrocki won 50.89% of the vote against 49.11% for his centrist, government-aligned rival, Rafał Trzaskowski.

Turnout stood at 71.63%, which is a record for a Polish presidential election, beating the 68.23% seen in 1995. It is also the second-highest turnout among all post-1989 Polish elections, behind only the 74.38% at the 2023 parliamentary election.

The outcome represents a remarkable victory for Nawrocki, a political novice who had never previously stood for elected office and trailed Trzaskowski in the polls for virtually the entire campaign. It will also have a huge influence on how Poland is governed during his five-year term.

Trzaskowski, who is deputy leader of Poland’s main ruling party, the centrist Civic Platform (PO), would have worked closely with the ruling coalition of PO Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

However, Nawrocki, technically an independent but whose candidacy was supported by the national-conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, is likely to wield his veto and other presidential powers to stymie the government’s agenda, just as the current PiS-aligned incumbent Andrzej Duda has done.

Trzaskowski, a multilingual former minister for European affairs and member of the European Parliament, would also have favoured closer relations with Brussels while Nawrocki – who was endorsed by the Trump administration during the campaign – is a eurosceptic who favours strong ties with Washington.

Sunday’s run-off vote came two weeks after Trzaskowski and Nawrocki had emerged as the top two candidates among 13 who stood in the first round two weeks earlier.

The initial exit poll, published immediately as voting ended at 9 p.m., placed Trzaskowski narrowly ahead, on 50.3%. However, with a margin of error of around 2 percentage points, that poll made the result too close to call.

Updated versions of the exit poll published later on Sunday and in the early hours of Monday – which also included the first official results as they began to filter through – showed a reversal of the situation, with Nawrocki now leading on 50.7%. That led many analysts to call the win for Nawrocki.

Among the first to congratulate Nawrocki on Monday morning was Duda, whose second and final term in office ends in August this year.

“It was a difficult, sometimes painful, but incredibly courageous fight for Poland, for how the affairs of our homeland are to be conducted,” wrote Duda, who endorsed Nawrocki during the campaign. “Thank you for this heroic fight until the last minute…Thank you…for the victory! Bravo!”

Duda, who himself defeated Trzaskowski at the 2020 presidential election, also thanked the losing candidate for his “determination in the fight for the presidency…[and] willingness to take responsibility for Poland”.

Neither Nawrocki nor Trzaskowski have yet commented on the result, but the first foreign leader to issue congratulations to Nawrocki was Petr Pavel, president of the neighbouring Czech Republic.

“I believe that, under his leadership, Poland will continue to develop its democratic and pro-Western direction and that our countries will continue their mutually beneficial cooperation,” wrote Pavel.

The final election results must also be confirmed by the Supreme Court’s chamber of extraordinary review and public affairs.

However, that process is shrouded in controversy because the chamber – which was created as part of the PiS party’s judicial reforms when it was in power – is regarded as illegitimate by Tusk’s government.

An attempt by the ruling coalition to change the way that the presidential election results are validated by the Supreme Court was vetoed in March this year by Duda

Sunday’s run-off vote comes at the end of a months-long campaign that has seen the interrelated issues of security and migration at the forefront.

The war in neighbouring Ukraine has seen both candidates pledge to continue efforts to bolster Poland’s defence capabilities through expansion and modernisation of the armed forces.

Nawrocki, however, has taken a much tougher line regarding Ukraine itself, including signing a pledge not to ratify its accession to NATO if he becomes president. Tusk, as well as Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, criticised that decision, saying that it echoed Russian demands.

Both candidates have also pledged to clamp down on immigration and on the support given to immigrants already in Poland, though again Nawrocki has taken tougher positions.

Trzaskowski, meanwhile, has pledged that, if he were to become president, he would seek to sign bills liberalising the abortion law, introducing same-sex civil partnerships and undoing PiS’s judicial reforms.

Nawrocki, by contrast, holds deeply conservative views on social issues and has pledged not to sign any bills ending the current near-total ban on abortion.

During the final stages of the campaign, Nawrocki was hit by a series of scandals. It came to light that he had lied about only having one apartment. Not only did he own a second, but various questions came to light over how he had come to possess it and how he treated the elderly, disabled man living there.

Subsequently, a leading news website, Onet, reported that Nawrocki had helped procure prostitutes for guests at a luxury hotel where he worked as a security guard. Nawrocki denied the claims – based on testimony by anonymous former colleagues – and pledged to sue Onet.

Meanwhile, Trzaskowski faced questions after it emerged that hundreds of thousands of zloty had been spent on Facebook adverts supporting him and attacking Nawrocki.

The provenance of that money remains unclear, but there is a chance it came from abroad, which would be illegal under Polish election law. Trzaskowski has insisted that he and his staff had no involvement in or knowledge of the campaign.