Laos: Rescuers race to free seven people trapped in flooded cave

Source: BBC News [UK State Media]

“Rescuers are racing against time to free seven people who have been trapped for nearly a week in a flooded cave in Laos. The seven were part of a group of villagers from the central province of Xaysomboun who had gone into the cave on Wednesday in search of gold and wildlife, but could not get out as rain and landslides blocked the cave’s entrance. Footage shared by the rescue groups show the cave divers crawling into the cave through narrow, muddy passageways that are almost completely flooded. Several experts involved in the dramatic rescue of a team of teenage footballers trapped deep inside a Thai cave back in 2018 are among those helping with the current rescue effort. A survivor who had managed to escape alerted the authorities about those still trapped, according to reports.” (05/26/26)

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cglpp1g388zo

Steve Trinward

More Iran war? There goes the neighborhood, and global economy.

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Karthik Sankaran

“For all the uncertainty about what will happen next on the military and diplomatic front in the Iran war, there is certainty about what has already happened on the economic front. And it is not good.” (05/26/26)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/economy-iran-war/

Thomas L. Knapp

Pope Leo’s unfashionable universalism

Source: UnHerd
by Sohrab Ahmari

“A two-millennia-old institution with one foot in the Roman Empire challenges Silicon Valley’s masters of AI and automation to do better. That’s the generic read on Pope Leo XIV’s debut encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, dramatized by photos from the Vatican of the pontiff shaking hands with Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah. And that’s true enough: ‘artificial intelligence’ is right there in the encyclical’s subtitle, and many of its 245 paragraphs are devoted to the topic. Yet Magnifica Humanitas only incidentally concerns the promise and peril of the AI revolution. A closer examination reveals that Leo’s ultimate project is nothing less than a defense of moral and political universalism — the collective struggle for ‘a universal truth about the good, knowable by human reason,’ as the pope puts it — just when universal reason is menaced on every side by various irrationalisms.” (05/26/26)

https://archive.is/co6Wr

Thomas L. Knapp

Senegal: Ousted PM Sonko elected parliament speaker in challenge to President Faye

Source: France 24 [French state media]

“Senegal is mired in a deep political crisis after President Bassirou Diomaye Faye on Friday sacked the popular Ousmane Sonko and dissolved the government after months of tensions. Sonko’s election as parliament speaker comes a day after Faye named senior economist Ahmadou Al Aminou, former regional central bank official, as prime minister. … Faye essentially owes his position to Sonko, his one time mentor who would almost certainly have taken the top job had he not been barred from running in the last presidential election due to a defamation conviction. The two men have fallen out in recent months as Senegal battles public debt. Faye wants to discuss a new aid programme with the IMF, while Sonko prefers a domestic, sovereigntist approach.” (05/26/260

https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20260526-senegal-ousted-pm-sonko-elected-parliament-speaker-in-challenge-to-president-faye

Thomas L. Knapp

What the marriage and family nostalgia is really about

Source: Los Angeles Times
by Stephanie Coontz

“I’ve spent much of my career as a historian criticizing any idealization of 1950s marriages. Domestic violence and child abuse were much more common then than today. It was perfectly legal for a man to forcibly rape his wife. And depression among homemakers was so widespread that by the end of the decade, physicians had labeled it the ‘housewife’s syndrome.’ … But I now believe I’ve been too dismissive of such nostalgia. The sense of loss that underlies it is not ‘all in people’s heads.’ Instead, I’ve come to see it as an example of what physicians call ‘referred pain,’ like when a problem in one part of the body is experienced as pain elsewhere. So too, I think, much of the pain we feel in our social and family relations originates in a deeper part of the economy and the body politic.” (05/26/26)

https://archive.is/4PsMG

Thomas L. Knapp

France: Gisèle Pelicot “deeply shocked” by decision not to jail boys in rape case

Source: BBC News [UK State Media]

“French rape survivor Gisèle Pelicot has told the BBC she is ‘deeply shocked’ that three teenage boys have been spared custodial sentences over the rape of two girls in Hampshire. The girls, then aged 15 and 14, were raped in separate incidents in Fordingbridge in November 2024 and January 2025, by two 14-year-olds. Another boy, then 13, was also convicted for his involvement in the second attack. The judge had said last week he wanted to avoid criminalizing the ‘very young’ boys. The youth rehabilitation order sentences handed to the boys are being referred to the Court of Appeal by the attorney general. Pelicot said she ‘saluted the strength’ and courage of one of the girls for speaking out.” (05/26/26)

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2117685lwo

Steve Trinward