Eight killed in possible hate crime
- A 21-year-old man entered three separate massage spas in Atlanta and shot eight people—of whom six were Asian American. The sole survivor in the Cherokee massage parlor shooting is 30-year-old Elcias Hernandez-Ortiz.
- Robert Aaron Long has since been captured and is in custody. Long walked into a store and bought a gun just hours before he went on a rampage. And he may have been headed to Florida next.
- He told the cops the attacks were not racially motivated: "He apparently has an issue, what he considers a sex addiction, and sees these locations as a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate."
- And in case you are thinking what many may be thinking, Atlanta’s mayor made clear: "These are legally operating businesses that have not been on our radar," and added that the city would not engage in "victim shaming, victim blaming.”
- Then again, the county sheriff's deputy held a tone-deaf press conference, where he explained Long’s actions: “He was pretty much fed up and had been kind of at the end of his rope..Yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did.” Also: this particular cop may be an anti-China Trump lover.
- Asian American groups have called it “an unspeakable tragedy—for the families of the victims first and foremost, but also for the Asian American community, which has been reeling from high levels of racist attacks over the course of the past year.”
- Point to note: There have been nearly 3,800 reports of hate incidents targeting the community in the US since last March.
- New York Times has details of the attacks. The Guardian has the response. BBC News has the best non-paywall overview.
The government’s got big plans
One: A single law to rule air, water and earth. That’s the big vision being put forward by officials—which is to get rid of the Air Act 1981, Water Act 1974, and the Environment (Protection) Act 1986 and set up one overarching ‘environment management’ law to govern all environmental issues. Part of this big move will be changing how violators are punished:
“For violators, we currently have provisions to close the industry or imprisonment but there is no provision for environmental compensation which courts have been pronouncing through judgements. The purpose (of the new law) is to make them (violators) fall in line rather than take extreme steps such as shutting down industries or imprisonment.”
Hmm, wonder what could go wrong with that? Of course, leading environmental lawyers think this is a terrible idea. Hindustan Times has more on that.
Two: Our very own freedom indexes. The government is also “mulling” recruiting an “independent Indian think tank” to put out a “world democracy report” as well as a “global press freedom index.” Hmm, the Observer Research Foundation, perchance? Also, please note: This is not a knee-jerk reaction to Freedom House downgrading India from ‘free’ to ‘partly free’. It was a considered response to the Swedish V-Dem Institute describing us as an “electoral autocracy. ”
Three: Selling ‘bundled’ airports. The plan is to club together loss-making airports with the profitable kind to make them attractive. For example: Adani-ji, you wanna buy the very lucrative one in Amritsar? Great, we will throw in the white elephant in Jharusuguda with that. (Economic Times)
Also making big plans: Dubai, which expects its population to surge by 76% over the next 20 years thanks to its alluring incentives to expats:
"Under the plan, the government envisages that more than half of the population will live within 800 meters (0.5 miles) of public transport and 60% of the desert emirate’s land will be protected as a natural reserve. A new urban planning law will be issued to support sustainable development at a time the government is looking to provide better housing for citizens."
What? No ‘environmental management’ plan? (Bloomberg News)
The great pandemic: A short update
- As many as 70 districts have reported a 150% increase in the number of cases over the past few weeks.
- Doctors found signs of infection in the cardiac tissue of three-quarters of those who died of Covid—indicating that the virus had travelled to the heart. Most of those infected were immune cells.
- A US airline forced a four-year old autistic child off the plane because he refused to wear a mask—despite guidelines that make an exception for people with disabilities. The staff said: "No no no. Autism's not a disability."
- Good read: Well+Good explains how getting enough sleep may help you build up immunity after getting the COVID-19 vaccine.
The Ambani-related case: A latest update
The Shiv Sena government is scrambling to distance itself from the entire mess—specifically, the bada cop accused of orchestrating the bomb scare outside Mukesh Ambani’s home (which we explained here). The problem: Sachin Vaze had been suspended due to his involvement in an encounter killing in the Ghatkopar bomb blast case—but was reinstated by the Shiv Sena government after they took power in 2019. The solution: blame it all on the current police commissioner—Param Bir Singh—and remove him from his post. The new guy who inherits Singh’s headache: Hemant Nagrale—who is profiled in Mint.
Kamala Harris’ bomb scare: Police have arrested a man outside Kamala Harris’ official residence in Washington DC. They recovered an “AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, 113 rounds of unregistered ammunition, and five 30 round magazines.” The good news: none of the Harrises were home at the time. And the best we can do is a bunch of unassembled gelatin sticks. (CNN)
Elliot Page makes magazine history
The Oscar-nominated actor has become the first transgender man to grace the cover of Time magazine. And it looks like so (we love the quote!):
Speaking of tolerance: A Japanese court has ruled that the country’s ban on same sex marriages is unconstitutional. A lot of this is about phrasing:
“Japan's constitution, put in place after the end of World War Two, defines marriage as one of ‘mutual consent between both sexes’. The government has said this means same-sex marriage was not ‘foreseen’ at the time. But lawyers for the plaintiffs said the phrasing was actually meant to prevent forced marriages, and that there is nothing in the constitution that explicitly prohibits gay marriage.”
That said, this doesn’t mean that legalisation is a given, but just the use of the word “unconstitutional” is a big victory in the long road ahead. (BBC News)
An alarming ‘skinny fad’
Some Chinese women are having a hard time embracing their adult bodies. The latest fad on social media has women photographing themselves trying on clothes in the children’s section of Uniqlo stores—to show how thin they are. Also this: It's reportedly resulted in stretched out t-shirts and clothes stained with makeup.
Point to note: China has a serious body-shaming problem: In a 2019 global survey of 27 countries, it was #1 in “believing that body weight and shape are important attributes in making a woman beautiful.”
Also as bad, Japan: Tokyo Olympics creative head Hiroshi Sasaki has resigned thanks to unbelievably derogatory remarks about a popular entertainer and plus-size icon Naomi Watanabe. Here’s Sasaki’s own account of what he did:
“I tend to joke often, so I said it just as something that slipped out of my mouth…(the idea of Watanabe) wearing a cute pink costume and sticking her tongue out as an ‘Olympig’. I thought that would make her look charming, but I was immediately reprimanded by male staff. I feel remorse.”
We have no words. (South China Morning Post)
US college admission chaos
This year, many top institutions including Ivy League schools have waived SAT and ACT test requirements. The result is a massive surge in applications:
“Harvard University received more than 57,000 freshman applications for next fall’s entering class, a 42% year-over-year jump. Yale, Columbia and Stanford universities were so overwhelmed they also pushed back the date to announce admission decisions. The University of Southern California’s applications pool beat the prior record by 7%. And New York University topped 100,000 applications, up 17% from last year.”
A possible upside: It may result in a more diverse incoming class than usual. But some college counselors are sceptical:
“But I don’t think it’s tipping the scale on access and equity… More than anything else it’s just making these applicant pools disturbingly big. It’s by and large just making more kids for them to reject.”
Wall Street Journal has more on the implications.
Song bird forgets its song
The regent honeyeater in Australia is a critically endangered species—with just 300 of them left in the world. The reason: the bird has lost about 90% of its habitat. And with such a sparse population distributed across a very large area, male birds face a new challenge: "They don't get the chance to hang around with other honeyeaters and learn what they're supposed to sound like." As a result, they are "singing weird songs"—and often end up learning songs of other species:( And then the females may not be willing to mate with them… which is catastrophic for a species already in great peril. BBC News has more on how scientists are trying to teach captive-bred birds to sing.
Feeling a lot less lonely: Chimpanzees in two Czech zoos who can watch each other hanging out on Zoom ‘video conferences’—streamed on giant screens. According to their keepers:
“At the beginning they approached the screen with defensive or threatening gestures, there was interaction… It has since moved into the mode of ‘I am in the movies’ or ‘I am watching TV’. When they see some tense situations, it gets them up off the couch, like us when we watch a live sport event.”
Also, it looks like this: