90-yr-old Saudi man sends 31st wife home, holds daughter captive

Shabana Sultana, 38, lived as the 31st wife of a Saudi national in the Gulf after her marriage to the small-time businessman 20 years ago.

While she was forced to return to her home here along with her two sons a year ago when she fell seriously ill, her 90-year-old husband did not allow her daughter to come back.

Sultana says her husband Al Sugaihi Ali Abdullah’s family members have confined the girl to a room and are not allowing her even to talk to her mother over phone. Ms Sultana approached MBT leader Amjed Ullah Khan for help and he has, on her behalf, lodged a petition with the Ministry of External Affairs. The matter stands there.

Sultana says when she was 13, her family was residing in Talabkatta. Her elder sister was already married to a Saudi trader and staying in Riyadh. After the sister’s husband died, her brother-in-law approached her for a re-marriage. She rejected his proposal and assured him that she would get her younger sister, Sultana, to marry him.

Initially, Sultana was reluctant to marry a man as old as Al Abdullah but her sister promised that she would be able to live a rich life and that, after his death, “all his property will be hers.”

In March 1996, Al Abdullah married her without providing any official documents related to marriage from Saudi Arabia. After staying with her for 20 days, he flew back to Saudi. Ms Sultana stayed with her parents. Since then, there were no phone calls from him. But he visited her in Hyderabad thrice and she gave birth to two daughters Zahoora Ali, Urooj Ali, and a son, Al Sugaihi Abdul Rehman.

Children’s visas have expired, says woman
In 2015, Al Abdullah called told her to get her and the children’s passports and visas done from the Saudi consulate in Mumbai. Ms Sultana along with her three kids landed in Riyadh in May 2015. There, all of them were confined to a small room. There were times when there was neither food nor water at the room.

“He would come to me once in three days, lock my children in another room and have intercourse with me and leave. If I refused he would assault me and abuse me. I pleaded him to leave me, but he was adamant,” Sultana said.

During her stay in Riyadh, she had visitors who were in the age-group of 25 to 60, identifying themselves as the children of her husband. From them, she came to know that she was his 31st wife. Her younger kids are also at risk as they are on visit visas there, which expired in September 2016. They can be detained by the police.

(Source: Deccan Chronicle)

Why Russia is about to decriminalise wife-beating

SHOULD it be a crime for a husband to hit his wife? In many countries this question no longer needs discussing. But not in Russia, where the Duma (parliament) voted this week to decriminalise domestic violence against family members unless it is a repeat offence or causes serious medical damage. The change is part of a state-sponsored turn to traditionalism during Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term. It has exposed deep fault lines. Many Russians now embrace the liberal notion of individual rights, but others are moving in the opposite direction.

Activists warn that decriminalisation will legitimise abuse. “The overall message to Russian citizens is that domestic violence isn’t a crime,” says Andrei Sinelnikov of the Anna Centre, a violence-prevention charity.

The debate began in 2016, when the government decriminalised battery, the least violent form of assault on the Russian statute books. Russia is one of three countries in Europe and Central Asia that do not have laws specifically targeting domestic violence. Instead it is treated like other forms of assault, ignoring the fact that spouses and children are more vulnerable than other victims. But when it decriminalised battery last June, the Duma decided to exempt domestic abuse, instead making it subject to the same two-year maximum sentence as racially motivated offences.

That pleased civil-society groups that had been pushing for tougher rules. But the Russian Orthodox Church was furious. Scripture and Russian tradition, the church said, regard “the reasonable and loving use of physical punishment as an essential part of the rights given to parents by God himself”. Meanwhile, conservative groups worried that parents might face jail. They argued that it was wrong for parents to face harsher punishment for hitting their child than a neighbour would.

Under pressure from such groups, deputies have put forward a bill that makes the first instance of poboi—battery that does not do lasting harm—an administrative violation carrying a fine of 30,000 roubles ($502), community service or a 15-day detention. It also returns the crime to the realm of “private prosecution”, where the victim is responsible for collecting evidence and bringing a case. Repeat offences would be criminal infractions, but only within a year of the first, giving abusers a pass to beat relatives once a year. Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the Duma, says the bill would help build “strong families”. The bill’s second reading on January 25th won 385 out of 387 votes. It is expected to sail through its third reading and be signed into law by Mr Putin.

He hit me, it didn’t feel like a kiss
Anna Zhavnerovich does not agree that tolerating domestic abuse leads to strong families. A lifestyle journalist in Moscow, Ms Zhavnerovich had lived with her boyfriend for several years and discussed marriage. One night in December 2014 the conversation turned towards the possibility of breaking up. Her boyfriend proceeded to beat her black and blue. She managed to get him convicted after lawyers who read the account she published online came to her aid. “People think it can’t happen to them,” says Ms Zhavnerovich. “They hold on to an illusion of safety.”

Domestic violence has deep cultural roots. An old Russian proverb says: “If he beats you it means he loves you.” “Violence isn’t just a norm, it’s our style of life,” says Alena Popova, an advocate for laws against domestic violence. The scale of the problem is difficult to measure, but according to Russia’s interior ministry, 40% of violent crimes happen within the family. More than 70% of women who call the Anna Centre’s hotline never report their cases to the police. The practice of private prosecution, which forces victims to navigate bureaucratic obstacles, dissuades many. “It’s the circles of hell, it goes on and on,” says Natalia Tunikova, who tried unsuccessfully to prosecute the man she says abused her.

Nonetheless, awareness has been growing, partly thanks to grassroots efforts. “The idea that ‘it’s her fault’ is no longer accepted a priori,” says Ms Zhavnerovich. (Curiously, she supports the new law, believing that more women will come forward if they do not think their partners will be sent to Russia’s harsh prisons.) A social-media flashmob under the hashtag “IAmNotAfraidToSpeak” took off in Ukraine and Russia last year, with thousands sharing tales of abuse.

Russia’s ultra-conservatives are not afraid to speak, either. Elena Mizulina, a senator known for promoting laws against “gay propaganda”, has pushed the latest changes, saying that “women are not offended when we see a man beating his wife.” But decriminalisation fans also argue that family affairs are not the state’s business. “The family is a delicate environment where people should sort things out themselves,” says Maria Mamikonyan, head of the All-Russian Parents Resistance movement, which collected thousands of signatures supporting the measure.

In a country scarred by communism—where the state was once all-intrusive and families had virtually no privacy—such sensitivities are understandable. Some of the opposition to domestic-violence laws stems from a rational fear of allowing Russia’s corrupt police and judiciary more power over family life. When critics charge that conservatives’ views hark back to the Domostroi, a set of household rules popular during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, Ms Mamikonyan objects. What they advocate is not a restoration of “the Middle Ages”, she says, but merely a return to the values “that European civilisation held in the 19th and 20th centuries”. To many Russian women, that still sounds like a giant step backwards.

(Source: The Economist)

Museum of linguistics

The Franklin School in downtown Washington, D.C., has sat vacant since 2008, but the city abandoned the building decades earlier. Designed by Adolf Cluss, the architect who built the Smithsonian Institution’s Castle and its Arts and Industries Building, the revival-style gem survived many efforts to demolish it. More recently, it’s been the focus of everything from mayoral redevelopment schemes to an Occupy demonstration in 2011.

Now another group will take a stab at the historic Franklin School. On Wednesday, the city announced plans to turn the building into a museum of linguistics. Led by philanthropist Ann B. Friedman (wife of New York Times columnist Tom Friedman), “Planet Word” will be an interactive center dedicated to language arts, in the vein of the National Museum of Mathematics in New York, according to the city. (Disclosure: Katherine Brittain Bradley, who sits on the board of Planet Word, is married to David Bradley, the owner of the Atlantic Media company.)

Turning the Franklin School into a museum is a practical use for a gorgeous if quirky space. The building’s historical protections are so thorough they all but rule out a more intensive use. This is, in fact, the second time in just more than two years that a museum concept has won the city’s support for a rehabilitation plan for the building. A cultural use for the space is by far the best outcome: A great public building deserves a great public use. And a closer look at the Franklin School’s rocky road to reuse shows why giving over historic architecture to culture—certainly not the city’s first instinct—could also be in the best financial interests of D.C.

So what does one do at a linguistics museum? It’s not entirely clear yet.

One reason the Franklin School has long sat vacant as the District’s downtown bloomed all around it is the splendor of the building itself. The architecture hails back to D.C.’s Red Brick City era, which Cluss penned nearly by himself. The architect helped to build D.C. up as an architecturally distinctive city in its own right, designing Eastern Market, Calvary Baptist Church, and dozens of other important red-brick buildings.

Many were not saved. As one of the most prominent examples of Cluss’s work, the Franklin School is a National Historic Landmark and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. It’s also one of about a dozen or so buildings whose interior also has preservation status—making it a poor candidate for adaptation as a luxury hotel or condo building.

In 2014, after years of dithering, the city went a different direction with the Franklin School. Under former D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray, the city picked a development partnership that planned to turn the Franklin School into the Institute for Contemporary Expression, a contemporary art and performance center. But when D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser came into office the following year, she swiftly scrapped the city’s agreement and started the Franklin School bid process all over again.

The reasons behind that reversal fired up critics locally. Bowser argued in 2015 that fundraising by ICE-DC founder Dani Levinas was too weak to continue. But that fundraising effort had not yet begun. Emails obtained by CityLab under a Freedom of Information Act request show that officials from both the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning & Economic Development as well as the Downtown DC Business Improvement District urged the D.C. Council to confirm the ICE-DC program so that fundraising could begin in earnest. At the time, Levinas had already raised $3 million toward a $15 million goal—a decent start—but Bowser scotched the museum plan before the Council could consummate the deal.

Whatever the reason for the mayor’s about-face, the project’s new team has her support. Dantes Partners, the developer behind Friedman’s Planet Word concept, is a relatively young boutique firm that in recent years has developed hundreds of affordable and supportive housing units. (Buwa Binitie, the founder of Dantes Partners, is a Bowser supporter who contributed $10,000 to her former political action committee and joined her on a recent trip to China.) This new team also has the funds to execute their vision: Planet Word is going to cost more than $30 million, but Friedman won’t have to raise funds for it. According to the city, Planet Word will pay for itself upfront.

Preservation restrictions have made reusing the historic Franklin School a challenge. Will "Planet Word" be the perfect fit?

Finally, the new team has the technical know-how to do a delicate job. SmithGroupJJR, an architecture firm with a lot of historic rehabilitation and adaptation experience, will lead a renovation to rebuild the interior to include a maker space and classrooms as well as an auditorium in the building’s third-floor mezzanine level.

So what does one do at a linguistics museum? It’s not entirely clear yet. On the Planet Word site, founder Friedman invites future visitors to “[i]dentify accents, tell us how you say soda and hoagie, learn tips from professional dialect coaches, and climb a Tower of Babel or tunnel through a prepositional playground.” The museum could potentially occupy the space once claimed by the now-defunct Children’s Museum as the D.C. institution with the kid-friendliest programming.

One thing is clear: Planet World will definitely be unlike anything else in D.C.—or really anywhere. Contemporary art, the program for ICE-DC, might have been a more proven model for the city to choose. In recent years, spectacle-scaled art installations have commanded enormous attention here. The National Building Museum’s architectural follies, from “The Maze” to “The Beach,” draw capacity-straining crowds. More than 732,000 viewers piled into “Wonder,” an Instagram-ready affair at the newly refurbished Renwick Gallery. ICE-DC could have served as a permanent local home for such shows.

Crowds will be key to fixing Franklin Square, one of D.C.’s least-loved parks.  Restoring this space (which is anchored by the Franklin School) is a perennial subject of conversation in the city. ICE-DC planned to host performances and happenings to draw in the office-lunch crowd; if “Wonder” and “The Beach” are any indication, the lines would have snaked around the square. If Planet Word comes up with a similar scheme to draw daytime foot traffic, it will have done the hardest work in revivifying Franklin Square, saving the city money in the long run and boosting the values of adjacent properties (which now include The Washington Post’s headquarters). A private use for the museum, say, as a tech incubator or boutique office space, would not make use of the unique affinity between Franklin Square and the Franklin School—a public space and a public building.

But will crowds really come for Planet Word? If the whole fun-with-linguistics concept doesn’t take off with locals, the museum might face the same tough sell as other non-Smithsonian downtown cultural centers (such as the National Museum of Women in the Arts) that are trying to lure tourists away from the National Mall. Unlike those local attractions, however, Planet Word will debut with one huge advantage: Entrance will be free.

It’s good that the city sees the wisdom (again) in preserving the Franklin School by turning it into a museum meant for residents. Planet Word is bound to do more for the Franklin School, and for the city, than any private building would have. When linguist nerds convene there to talk gerunds and hit up a nearby food truck—or when bored Posties amble over during a lunch break to learn a few things about dangling modifiers—they will be giving Franklin Square a use as well. For the city, a quality museum at the Franklin School is a two-for-one deal.

(Source: City Lab)

There are now only 10 countries in the world that are actually free from conflict

The world is becoming a more dangerous place and there are now just 10 countries which can be considered completely free from conflict, according to authors of the 10th annual Global Peace Index.

The worsening conflict in the Middle East, the lack of a solution to the refugee crisis and an increase in deaths from major terrorist incidents have all contributed to the world being less peaceful in 2016 than it was in 2015.

And there are now fewer countries in the world which can be considered truly at peace – in other words, not engaged in any conflicts either internally or externally – than there were in 2014.

According to the Institute for Economics and Peace, a think tank which has produced the index for the past 10 years, only Botswana, Chile, Costa Rica, Japan, Mauritius, Panama, Qatar, Switzerland, Uruguay and Vietnam are free from conflict.

Brazil is the country that has dropped out of the list, and as one of the worst performing countries year-on-year represents a serious concern ahead of the Rio Olympics, the IEP’s founder Steve Killelea told The Independent.

But perhaps the most remarkable result from this year’s peace index, he said, was the extent to which the situation in the Middle East drags down the rest of the world when it comes to peacefulness.

“If we look at the world overall, it has become slightly less peaceful in the last 12 months,” Mr Killelea said.

“But if we took the Middle East out of the index over the last decade – and last year – the world would have become more peaceful. It really highlights the impact the Middle East is having on the world.”

The index shows that 81 countries became more peaceful in the past year, while the situation deteriorated in 79.

Unlike with previous years, however, the IEP noticed a clear trend where the more peaceful countries improved further while the less peaceful countries got even worse – producing what they called greater “peace inequality” across the world.

“The key reason behind it is our inability to solve the conflicts which are emerging," Mr Killelea said. “The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have been going for well over a decade, then it spilled into Syria in 2011, and afterwards into Libya and Yemen. That [failure] is really the key to the problem.

“If we take battlefield deaths for example, they are up at 112,000 – a 20-year high. But again, if you took out Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, they count for 75 per cent of those deaths.”

The index shows that political instability worsened in 39 countries in the last 12 months, including what the report described as the “striking case” of Brazil.

It has fallen five places to 105th out of the 163 countries included in the study, due to increases in the number of people jailed, the number of security officers deployed by the state and also a slight increase in terrorist activity.

“It is very difficult to say how that will play out in terms of the Olympic Games,” said Mr Killelea. “It’s obviously a very volatile situation.”

Iceland was once again named the world’s most peaceful country, followed by Denmark, Austria, New Zealand and Portugal, the latter improving nine places. Syria was once again named the least peaceful country.

The index suggests the world is less peaceful in 2016 than at any point in the past eight years (IEP)

Asked how the rest of the world can learn from Iceland, Mr Killelea said: “It’s not just Iceland, it’s a whole range of countries which we can learn from. They are practising what we call positive peace, which are factors which create and sustain peaceful societies.”

The IEP tries to define positive peace in numerical terms, giving countries scores for a range of factors including “acceptance of the rights of others”, “low levels of corruption”, “the free flow of information” and a “well functioning government”.

“If positive peace is strong enough, then a country which is presented with shocks won’t actually have a deterioration in peace [as measured by violence],” he said.

Finally, the index identified Europe once again as the most peaceful region in the world, and by some margin, home to seven of the top 10 countries on the list.

Yet the continent is not immune to war – Britain, France, Belgium and others are heavily involved in external conflict in the Middle East, and face a growing threat to peace from international terrorism.

So given all the dire warnings from either side about the security of Europe if Britain leaves the EU, does the IEP foresee a change in the region’s fortunes in the event of Brexit?

“It’s unlikely to have an effect in the short term,” Mr Killelea said. “But the longer-term ramifications, more for Britain than for [the rest of] Europe, would probably depend on what the economic outcome of a British exit would be.

“If the economy was robust Britain would probably maintain its current levels of peace. However, if there’s a deterioration in the economy then that would come back and have a negative impact on peacefulness.”

(Source: The Independent)

Grandma myths about childcare busted

There is no escape from the passage of maternal wisdom. The struggle is real when a new mother is torn between the advice of her maternal bloodline…and the prescriptions of her own doctor.

Here are nine pieces of advice published on Stepfeed you definitely shouldn’t be taking, and that science has decisively rendered myths:

1. A baby shouldn’t leave the house.
This advice only applies when the weather's bad! Otherwise, fresh air is excellent for a baby’s health.

2. Daily showers are a must
Babies don’t sweat like adults do, so they don’t need a bath everyday, unless there’s a major diapers misadventure!

3. Don’t breastfeed when you're pregnant
This is nothing more than an old wives' tale. Breastfeeding while pregnant doesn’t hurt the mother OR her fetus. Unless your doctor says you have a nutritional deficiency and can’t afford to pump out the milk, you can throw this piece of advice out the door.

4. Some babies are allergic to their mother’s milk
There has never been a child that was allergic to their mom’s breast milk. It’s a biological impossibility.

5. Babies not only need milk but water, too
A mother’s milk is the only fluid that a baby needs. Water isn’t supposed to enter his/her system until after 4-6 months of age. This is also when he/she can start eating solid foods.

6.Baby wraps for a straight spine
The habit of wrapping a baby in fabric for a straight spine is one of those grandma myths that have very little empirical support. Legend has it that a baby wrap induces feelings of security in the baby, because it’s a feeling that resembles a return to the womb.

In fact, doctors warn against the practice. It restricts necessary movement from the baby, and this only stunts growth.

7. Babies should wear their left shoe on the right foot and vice versa
Some of our grandmas though that this practice would prevent flat-footedness. Dismiss this completely, my friends, and let your kid roam free, preferably barefoot!

8. Don’t let your kid use their left-hand ... ever
What’s wrong with being left-handed? Let’s get rid of these silly attitudes once and for all.

9. Don’t let your kid get a so-called ‘sugar high’
The only reason you should reduce your kid’s sugar consumption is to prevent tooth cavities, and by prescription from your dentist.

There is no scientific evidence to support that there is any such thing as a “sugar high”.