2018
November
26
Monday

Monitor Daily Podcast

November 26, 2018
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My husband and I have a Sunday afternoon ritual. When we get home from church, we munch on subs and chips and listen to C-SPAN radio’s replay of the morning news talk shows. On your dial or app, you can hear all five TV programs throughout the afternoon.

Yesterday we caught all of the shows as we ran errands. Every single host – whether on Fox News Sunday, NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week, CNN’S State of the Union, or CBS’s Face the Nation – brought up climate change.

I mention this because on the day after Thanksgiving, when the public was busy with Black Friday shopping, the Trump administration released the nation’s fourth report on climate change, as required by Congress. It was a very stark assessment, and typical of administrations before it, this White House tried to bury the bad news.

But the opposite has happened. Media led with it on Saturday, continued the discussion on Sunday, and asked the president about it on Monday. Meanwhile, this week, House members plan to introduce the first bipartisan climate change bill in a decade, according to Bloomberg News. This on the heels of protests in Nancy Pelosi’s office to make climate change a priority – and her promise to reinstate a special committee on global warming.

Critics complain about all talk and no action on climate change. But here’s the thing. Without talk, without pressure, there is no action. Now, at least, we have talk – and what looks to be shaping up as a 2020 election issue. 

Now to our five stories for today. 


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Russia’s annexation of Crimea four years ago was like a dagger to the heart of Ukraine. But military tensions are causing economic ones. Astonishingly, trade between Russia and Ukraine has dropped by two-thirds in five years.

Rogelio V. Solis/AP
Democrat Mike Espy challenges a statement from Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R) during a televised debate in Jackson, Miss., Nov. 20. Democrats are hoping for high African-American turnout after Senator Hyde-Smith stirred outrage by telling a supporter she’d attend a 'public hanging' if he asked.

After a racially tinged campaign, Mississippi votes in a US Senate run-off Tuesday. The theory is that with the right candidates, Democrats can remake a heavily red state like this one. So far, it’s still a theory – though it’s one with potential.

On the move

The faces, places, and politics of migration
Ryan Lenora Brown/The Christian Science Monitor
Omar Danso (l.) and Alhagie Nyang broadcast a recent edition of their radio show, the Actavista Radio Hour, which promotes alternatives to emigration for young Gambians.

Everybody has a story. Now the European Union is trying to show people in the African country of Gambia that they can make their own success stories right where they are – without having to migrate to Europe. This story is the eighth in a series.

Ann Hermes/Staff
Courtney McMahon, lead nurse at Tulsa Family Connects, sits at the Parent Child Center of Tulsa, Okla. The center finds creative ways, from gift bags to text reminders, to persuade moms to sign up for and accept postpartum visits.

How much of the social safety net should be private, and how much public? Here's what happens when a private foundation funded by an Oklahoma billionaire sends nurses out to help new moms in Tulsa.

Just as Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” lifts hearts, so is music being used in the US military to help troops struggling with post-traumatic stress and brain injuries.


The Monitor's View

Reuters
People attend a rally against gender-based and sexual violence against women in Madrid, Spain, Nov. 25.

On Nov. 25, tens of thousands of people from Greece to Ecuador to Tanzania rallied against gender-based assaults of all kinds. Officially the protests marked International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. The event also kicked off a new campaign by the United Nations to fight the kind of violence that will affect more than a third of women during their lives.

Yet the large size of the crowds, especially in Europe, also signals the rapid spread of the #MeToo movement. A year after revelations about sexual abuse in Hollywood, many nations have gone from hashtag activism to attempting real progress against gender-based discrimination and abuse. 

If social media were the only gauge of progress, the numbers would speak loudly. On Twitter, #MeToo averages more than 55,000 uses a day and has been used in more than 85 countries. Nearly a third of the tweets have been in languages other than English.

Yet substantial progress seems more difficult to measure, especially in ending gender-based homicides. According to a new UN report, the rate of women killed by someone close to them dipped only slightly in recent years, from 1.4 per 100,000 in 2012 to 1.3 per 100,000 in 2017. Last year, an estimated 50,000 women and girls were intentionally killed by an intimate partner or family member. 

While many nations have new laws against gender-based violence or provide special training for law enforcement officials, much of the progress can be seen in anecdotal shifts of attitudes. Last March, for example, a Ugandan politician was forced to apologize after women protested his remark that husbands should beat their wives to “discipline” them. In Afghanistan, a survey revealed that young women are more likely than their mothers to oppose domestic violence. And the Roman Catholic Church’s global organization of nuns for the first time denounced the “culture of silence and secrecy” surrounding sexual abuse in the church.

The UN report also lays out this path to progress: “In order to prevent and tackle gender-related killing of women and girls, men need to be involved ... in changing cultural norms that move away from violent masculinity and gender stereotypes.”

The big task remains in ending harmful traditional practices, such as honor killings, child marriage, female infanticide, rape as a weapon of war, and for many, domestic violence. But also better collection of data can help raise awareness of the magnitude of the problems and ways to fix them. 

Since 2005, some 90 countries have conducted surveys about violence against women, double the number from the decade before. In 2011, the UN established nine indicators for measuring abuse against women. And among the Sustainable Development Goals set by the UN in 2015, three concern gender-based violence.

The recent demonstrations were only the latest reminder of a movement to treat women as equal and valued partners, an idea that would allow them to live with safety and dignity.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

Today’s contributor arrived at her dream college only to find that self-focused ambitions left her wanting. But when the insight that everyone’s true purpose is to express God’s love prompted her to rethink her motives, everything got better.


A message of love

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
Workers lower the 2018 US Capitol Christmas tree as it arrives at the west lawn of the Capitol in Washington Nov. 26. The 82-foot noble fir was grown in Oregon’s Willamette National Forest.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thanks again for being here today. Come back tomorrow. Between big needs and evolving ways to give, being charitable may seem more complicated than ever. For Giving Tuesday, we’ll share some expert tips on how to navigate the options. 

Also, a correction: A caption in the Nov. 21 edition of the Daily provided an incorrect conversion of the height of King Power Mahanakhon Building in Bangkok, Thailand. It is 1,030 feet tall.

More issues

2018
November
26
Monday

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