Stephan: Over 400 children kidnapped from their parents are still separated from them. The effects of this policy have been devastating, as this report describes. Personally, I think Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions and the officers and staff of ICE and Border and Customs should be arrested and tried in the World Court for crimes against humanity.
Border Patrol took a photo of Anita and Jenri before separating them. Credit: U.S. Border Patrol
SAN BENITO, TEXAS —Anita and Jenri, mother and son, fled north from Honduras and crossed the Rio Grande on a raft near McAllen, Texas, in mid-June. They immediately turned themselves over to Border Patrol and asked for asylum.
Agents transported them to the station known among immigrants as the perrera, or “dog pound,” because of the chain-link cages used to hold them. Anita and Jenri had no way of knowing, during their journey, that the Trump administration had begun separating families along the southwest border in early May in an attempt to deter migration.
Moments before agents took Jenri, 6, away from Anita, they snapped a mug shot of them together with vacant expressions. It was one of the few record-keeping measures the government took in what would become a national crisis involving hundreds of separated families, missing children, and, ultimately, deported mothers and fathers faced with the haunting prospect of never again seeing their sons and daughters.
Stephan: We are being so outplayed geopolitically by the Chinese; it's pathetic. This is why I think China is going to be the dominant culture in the last half of the 21st century.
China’s President Xi Jinping has offered $60bn in financial support to African countries and written off debt for the continent’s poorer nations.
Speaking at the opening of a major summit with African leaders in Beijing on Monday, Xi said the figure included $15bn in grants, interest-free loans and concessional loans, a credit line of $20bn, $10bn for “development financing” and $5bn to buy imports from the continent.
Chinese companies will be encouraged to invest no less than $10bn in African countries in the next three years, he added.
Government debt from China’s interest-free loans due by the end of 2018 will be written off for indebted poor African countries, as well as for developing nations in the continent’s interior and small island nations, Xi said.
“China-Africa cooperation must give Chinese and African people tangible benefits and successes that can be seen, that can be felt,” he said.
China will carry out 50 projects on green development and environmental protection in Africa, focusing on fighting climate change, desertification and wildlife protection, the Chinese leader said.
Xi pledged, without giving details, that China would set up a peace and security fund […]
RICHARD FRY AND RAKESH KOCHHAR, Senior Researcher Economics and Education - Pew Research Center
Stephan: You may be surprised to learn where you are economically.
About half of American adults lived in middle-income households in 2016, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data. In percentage terms, 52% of adults lived in middle-income households, 29% in lower-income households and 19% in upper-income households.
Our calculator below, updated with 2016 data, lets you find out which group you are in – first compared with other adults in your metropolitan area and among American adults overall, and then compared with other adults in the United States similar to you in education, age, race or ethnicity, and marital status.
STEP 1: See where you are in the distribution of Americans by income tier. Enter the location that best describes where you live, your household income and the number of people in your household. The calculator adjusts for the cost of living in your area.
State:
Select a stateAlabamaAlaskaArizonaArkansasCaliforniaColoradoConnecticutDelawareDistrict of ColumbiaFloridaGeorgiaHawaiiIdahoIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyLouisianaMaineMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissouriMontanaNebraskaNevadaNew HampshireNew JerseyNew MexicoNew YorkNorth CarolinaNorth DakotaOhioOklahomaOregonPennsylvaniaRhode IslandSouth CarolinaSouth DakotaTennesseeTexasUtahVermontVirginiaWashingtonWest VirginiaWisconsinWyoming
Metropolitan area:
BellinghamBremerton-SilverdaleOlympia-TumwaterPortland-Vancouver-HillsboroSeattle-Tacoma-BellevueSpokane-Spokane ValleyWenatcheeYakimaNone of the Above
Svante Pääbo, Viviane Slon, Benjamin Vernot, Sandra Jacob, - Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Stephan: Human history is so much more complex than we have known until very recently, and there is much more to come. We are, for instance, inter-species organisms.
This mixed species bone fragment (“Denisova 11”) was found in 2012 at Denisova Cave in Russia by Russian archaeologists and… [more] Credit: T. Higham/University of Oxford
Up until 40,000 years ago, at least two groups of hominins inhabited Eurasia – Neandertals in the west and Denisovans in the east. Now, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, sequenced the genome of an ancient hominin individual from Siberia, and discovered that she had a Neandertal mother and a Denisovan father.
Together with their sister group the Neandertals, Denisovans are the closest extinct relatives of currently living humans. “We knew from previous studies that Neandertals and Denisovans must have occasionally had children together”, says Viviane Slon, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and one of three first authors of the study. “But I never thought we would be so lucky as to find an actual offspring of the two groups.”
The ancient individual is only represented by a single small bone fragment. “The fragment is part of a long bone, […]
Family and friends of Americans who overdosed on OxyContin protest at Purdue Pharma’s in Stamford, Connecticut. Credit: Jessica Hill/AP/REX/Shutterstock
In recent years, America’s pharmaceutical industry has taken it on the chin. Populist demagogues have savaged drug companies for “jacking up” the price of life-saving substances like insulin (a.k.a. honoring their fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value). These boisterous neo-Bolsheviks will point to the fact that pharmaceuticals are several times more expensive in the U.S. than in other countries, and conclude that our government’s exceptionally strong patent laws — and aberrant refusal to push down drug prices through direct negotiation — are meant to enrich Big Pharma at the working American’s expense.
But such cretinous critiques ignore a simple fact: In exchange for paying exceptionally high drug prices, Americans enjoy exceptionally high rates of pharmaceutical innovation. And when we give entrepreneurs the incentive to patent new medicines — by holding out the promise of windfall profits — our whole society benefits.
To see the beneficent effects of encouraging free […]
China’s President 
About half of American adults lived in middle-income households in 2016, according to a new 
