Sometimes it takes a young person with bravery and a moral compass to shame a society. Well done Akiva for standing tall and facing down the mob pic.twitter.com/nIYzTEwAn3 — Jake Wallis Simons (@JakeWSimons) June 10, 2024 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

From the Daily NK: In 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, the women serving life sentences in Kaechon Prison Camp had to focus on producing export goods such as knitwear, wigs and false eyelashes, even though they were suffering from hunger and illness. The workshop of the prison camp urged the women inmates to…

File under "brave but foolish". A Pakistani man who tried to set up the nation's first gay club has been thrown into a mental hospital, after religious conservatives claimed he only did so after coming back from the UK. The man, who was not identified by the Telegraph, filed an application to set the club…

From the Mail: Police chiefs are under fire for failing to stop transgender officers being allowed to strip-search women. After an outcry earlier this year, the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) withdrew guidance permitting biological males identifying as female to intimately search women. It said it was launching a 'thorough' review of the rules, while…

May 9, 1913. "Detroit City Gas Company, north end of gas holder." [Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Publishing Company] With Erection Car no.9 helping to put the pieces together.

David Walsh in today's Sunday Times has been reading Doriane Coleman’s new book On Sex and Gender — A Commonsense Approach, with her discussion of the old East European tradition of doping female athletes. Coleman had some experience of the difficulties. On a July afternoon in Munich in 1983, she competed in an international 800m…

At the same time as yesterday’s rescue mission, American students dressed up as terrorists and chanted for the death of Jews and Israelis — code name “Zionists” — infront of the White House. This isn’t the 1930s, you can’t just call for antisemitic, genocidal regimes to murder… pic.twitter.com/rBXW4OQU5L — Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) June 9, 2024…

Sonia Sodha in the Observer – Labour’s reaction to Kemi Badenoch’s plan to define sex is not only a hapless fudge, it’s legally illiterate: The law is a mess, and the situation is made worse by activists such as Stonewall who have taken advantage of the confusion to mislead people about what it says….I’ve spoken…

Amusing letter from Andrew Lloyd Webber in today's Sunday Times: Have any political pundits considered the following scenario (offered with apologies to Mel Brooks and The Producers)? A prime minister wishes to lose an election to pursue a far more lucrative career elsewhere. The PM contrives an unelectable case for his or her party; MPs…

Ca. 1900. "Château Frontenac & Dufferin Terrace, Quebec City." [Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Photographic Company] Opened in 1893, now the Fairmont Le Château Frontenac Hotel.