June 19, 2015

The Pope and the Republicans, Terror in Charleston, Denmark’s Election and an Animal Uprising

 
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IN A NUTSHELL: MUST READS The Pope Fights Climate Change with Latin Pope Francis I, the first non-European head of the Catholic church in 1,200 years, released an encyclical (a very long document with lots of Latin in it) warning of the dangers of global warming. A bold intervention into environmental activism for the Pontiff ahead of yet another gathering of world leaders in Paris later this year to discuss climate change (“Yes it’s a problem, we should do something..anyone got any ideas?”). This obviously caused outrage within the US Republican party with James M. Inhofe, Republican Senator and author of the great bedtime read “The Greatest Hoax: The Global Warming Conspiracy and How it Threatens Your Future” saying that the science “wasn’t settled”. Galileo anyone…?
Charleston: A terror attack set to re-open America’s wounds The killing of 9 African-American worshippers at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston has caused heartache and soul-searching across America. The suspect, a white 21-year-old man called Dylann Roof, had attended a prayer group at the church earlier in the day and had been found by police with racist literature and a Rhodesia badge on his sweater. This shooting underlined the increasing frequency of mass-shootings and the “toxic mixture of racial hatred and availability of guns in the US”. Furthermore, there has been uproar over the media coverage of the event with many pointing out that due to the fact that he was white the media were more sympathetic to him. A terrible event and one which we hope is never repeated..
TOUGH NUT: IN THE NEWS Denmark’s Election: A Country Shifting Right
Denmark, a country with great coffee and impossibly tall, god-like people, has voted in a new government, replacing the incumbent centre-left Social Democrats. Their now former PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt (she took that famous selfie with Obama) was unseated by the centre-right coalition of the Liberals and the anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party. Immigration became a key topic for the Danes with the PM even saying that Denmark was not a “multi-ethnic country”. This defeat is in keeping with a crisis for centre-left parties across Europe who are struggling to reconcile globalization and austerity with platforms which they have run on for the last 50 years. 
IN OTHER NEWS

Zoo Animals Stage Coup D’Etat In Georgia Floods engulfed the central Asian nation of Georgia this week leading to over 300 animals in the local zoo making a break for freedom. An African penguin even made it to the border with Azerbaijan but was stopped by guards. A hippopotamus was also spotted walking around the square in the capital, Tbilisi, presumably doing some sight-seeing. The animal uprising was put down as local army and police units used tranquilisers and locals came together to clean up the extensive flooding damage.
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