PBS News: Defying Pope Leo XIV, traditionalists go ahead with bishop consecrations in Switzerland
PBS News reports that the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, in open defiance of Pope Leo XIV, consecrated four bishops without papal consent in Écône, Switzerland — an act that under church law brings automatic excommunication for both the new bishops and the consecrating bishop. Leo had warned in a letter that the step was a “sin of extreme gravity”, yet some 16,500 faithful who prefer the traditional Latin Mass attended the ceremony. The society, which rejects the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, considers the penalties void; for a pope who has made church unity his priority, it is a crisis.
Financial Times: The economics of women’s weight
In a Financial Times column, Soumaya Keynes writes about the economics of weight: the richer tend to be thinner, and the divide is driven mostly by women — among the poorest third of American women obesity is 14 percentage points more common than among the richest third, while for men the gap is under a point. A new Harvard study finds that GLP-1 weight-loss drugs change women’s lives substantially: among users who start out jobless, the employment rate after 18 months is 27 percentage points higher, and single ones are 29 points more likely to find a partner — usually a richer one. But since the drugs are so far used mostly by the affluent, obesity may become an even stronger marker of poverty, and the stigma attached to it may grow.
Wired: Inside the Luddite Festival Harnessing Gen Z’s Rage Against Big Tech
Wired describes the “Summer of Ludd” in New York — a week-long festival in Tompkins Square Park whose organisers urge people to put their phones away and meet in person: a play about the 19th-century Luddites, workshops on dating offline, hand-made zines, and nothing advertised online — “only in real life!”. The new Luddite movement is associated with Gen Z: the first generation to grow up entirely with digital technology is increasingly critical of it — in a Pew survey, 48% of teens said social media harms their peers (up from 32% in 2022). The organisers stay anonymous and speak to the media through a puppet named Gowanus.
LSM’s US correspondent Ina Strazdiņa reports that the 16th General Latvian Song and Dance Festival in the US opens on 2 July in Grand Rapids, Michigan: several hundred singers from the US, Latvia and Brazil and nearly a thousand dancers from Latvia, Switzerland and the US are taking part, with the grand closing concert as the weekend culmination. The festival coincides with the United States’ 250th anniversary, so it is partly Latvia’s gift for America’s birthday.
Politico: Top EU court upholds Google Android fine in landmark antitrust case
Politico reports that the Court of Justice of the EU has definitively dismissed Google’s appeal against the €4.125 billion Android fine: the company abused its dominant position by requiring smartphone makers that wanted access to the Play Store to pre-install Google Search and the Chrome browser. This closes one of Brussels’ longest-running antitrust battles with Big Tech; attention now shifts to the Digital Markets Act, under which Google Search is already being investigated for favouring its own services in search results.
Meduza: Why is Belarus making concessions to Ukraine? Is Lukashenko really that afraid?
Meduza republishes an analysis by Carnegie expert Artyom Shraibman on why Belarus has started making concessions to Ukraine: after an ultimatum from Kyiv, Minsk switched off border-area relay stations that had been improving the guidance of Russian drones, while Lukashenko met Zelensky’s representatives himself and even apologised to Zelensky. Shraibman explains it by the weakening of Russia as a security guarantor: Ukrainian drones and missiles can reach any site in Belarus, Russia has nothing to counter them with, and so Lukashenko opts for concessions to keep his country out of the war.
Yle: Finland tells parents: Take your toddler to the forest
Yle reports that parents in Finland are being encouraged to spend more time in nature during pregnancy and a child’s first years: “Raised by Nature”, a guidebook prepared by the South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences and set to be distributed to family health clinics nationwide, explains that time spent in the forest strengthens a small child’s immune system and motor skills and makes an excellent learning environment. It also offers practical tips — on a forest walk, let the child handle bark, moss, sticks and cones.
The New York Times: Boston Is Drinking Like It’s 1776. The Founding Fathers Would Be Proud.
The New York Times describes how Boston — the cradle of the American Revolution — is reviving colonial-era drinks for the country’s 250th-anniversary summer: historian Brooke Barbier and bar manager Syd Williams have recreated grog and the cherry drink “cherry bounce” at Bell in Hand, the oldest continuously operating tavern in the US. The biggest worry was not adapting them to modern tastes but the law — you cannot serve 16 ounces (nearly half a litre) of alcohol in one glass. And however much the tourists drink this summer, the founders probably had them beat.
Radio Prague International: Little Hanoi: Next Generation explores what it means to grow up Vietnamese in Czechia
Radio Prague International tells the story of “Little Hanoi: Next Generation”, an exhibition at Prague’s Holešovice Market Hall — 76 large-scale portraits with personal stories of the children of Vietnamese immigrants who grew up between two cultures and call Czechia home. The exhibition follows up on a 2008 project about the first generation; its creators want to break stereotypes — the second generation includes not just shopkeepers but artists, lawyers and doctors — and hope visitors leave feeling that the Vietnamese community is part of Czech society.
Financial Times: Russian drone campaign mapped Nato air defence gaps, study finds
The Financial Times reports on a study by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS): in a 19-month drone campaign across more than a dozen NATO countries and Ireland, Russia mapped Europe’s air-defence gaps — drones appeared near airports, nuclear sites and military bases, and some were probably launched from shadow-fleet tankers. Governments treated the incidents as separate national issues and were often reluctant to blame Russia directly, so there was no collective response; moreover, Europe’s air defences were built against aircraft and missiles, not cheap, slow-moving drones. The report calls on NATO and the EU to review counter-drone rules, because “resilience alone is insufficient”.
Meduza: Soviet intelligence was already eyeing Boris Johnson in the 1980s and compiled a dossier on him
Meduza relays a Telegraph story on a report by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele: Soviet intelligence was already gathering material on Boris Johnson in the 1980s, when he was an Oxford student, reckoning he might one day lead Britain. The dossier describes Johnson as “an eccentric, unusual man, full of wit, charm and brilliance” who can also be “easily manipulated” — but the spies concluded that “such a manic self-publicist” was unfit for any deep, long-term intelligence relationship. Johnson himself was amazed: “No wonder they lost the Cold War.”