A Bit More Detail

• This Shane Mitchell op-ed at Spacing warns about how plans for a new hospital in Windsor can threaten to promote sprawl.


• Debates over bike traffic laws are ongoing in Calgary. Global News reports.


• Guardian Cities looks at how the downtown of the French city of Mulhouse has been successfully regenerated.


• Guardian Cities looks at how the infamous housing estate of Scampia outside of Naples, famously derelict and a nexus for crime, is finally being torn down.


• Atlas Obscura notes an Armenian church in Dhaka, last remnant of a once-vast Armenian trading diaspora that extended out to Bengal.

• This r/imaginarymaps map imagines a Balkans where Muslims remain in larger numbers throughout the peninsula, leading to border changes in the south, particularly.


• An Ethiopia that has conquered most of the Horn of Africa by the mid-19th century, even going into Yemen, is the subject of this r/imaginarymaps map. Could this ever have happened?


• This r/imaginarymaps map imagines, here, a unified European Confederation descending from a conquest of Europe by Napoleon. Would this have been stable, I wonder?


• Was the unification of Australia inevitable, or, as this r/imaginarymaps post suggests, was a failure to unify or even a later split imaginable?


• Was a unified and independent Bengal possible, something like what this r/imaginarymaps post depicts?

• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the decline of the Free Tibet movement from a recent 1990s apogee.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the extent to which lynching in the United States is broadly dispersed throughout the country, is not only a method of African-American suppression.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money takes a look at Beto O'Rourke as a Democratic nominee for the American presidency.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money takes issue, rightfully, with the Islamophobic criticism of Ilham Omar by even her supposed allies.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the people who recently died in Bangladesh at one end of a global supply chain, and asks about our responsibility at the other end.

• The Conversation notes how New Brunswick, with its economic challenges and its language divide, represents in microcosm the problems of wider Canada.


• This Los Angeles Times article notes how Rohingya Hindus see themselves, rightly, as sharing a different fate from their Muslim coethnics.


• This New York Times article looks at how the Internet censors of China are trained, by letting them know about the actual history of their country first.


• Bloomberg reports how on the Iranian government tries to engage selectively with the social networking platforms, like Instagram and Telegram, used by the outside world.


• Bloomberg notes that the concern of Japan that the United Kingdom, Japanese companies' chosen platform for export to the EU, might engage in a hard Brexit is pressing.

• The slow melt of the Greenland icecap will eventually release a Cold War American military base into the open air. VICE reports.


• Robert Farley suggests at The National Interest that China's artificial islands in the South China Sea would not be of much use in an actual conflict.


• Reuters notes that a mud island in the Bay of Bengal lucky not to be overwhelmed by high tides is being expanded into a compound to hold Rohingya refugees.


• A new study suggests that there was some genetic continuing between pre- and post-Columbian populations in the Caribbean, that as family and local histories suggest at least some Taino did survive the catastrophes of colonialism. National Geographic reports.


• This account from NACLA of Puerto Rico's perennial problems with the American mainland and the history of migration, culminating in an ongoing disastrous mass emigration after Maria, is pro-independence. Might this viewpoint become more common among Puerto Ricans?

• Politics in a small Newfoundland community seem to literally be a family matter, of Crockers and Blakes. The National Post reports.


• Goldfish are taking over the water systems of the Alberta city of St. Albert's. The National Post reports.


• This BBC feature looks at the lives of the inhabitants, survivors and not, of the 21st floor of Grenfell.


• This Guardian feature looks at ways cities can protect themselves against disaster, especially with water.

• If Greyhound pulls out of northern BC, and the rest of rural Canada, what will happen to these regions? CBC reports.


• The militarized community policing describes in Bloomberg View in New York's famed Hamptons does say something worrisome of psyches.


• A Bangladeshi observer makes the obvious point over at the Inter Press Service that Myanmar needs to radically change its treatment of the Rohingya.


• Open Democracy looks at how the miliitarized US-Mexican border harms the Tohono O'odham, divided by said.


• This Wired interview with Antonio Guillem, the photographer whose images made distracted boyfriend meme, is amazing.

Like many other fast-growing megacities, the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka faces severe water and sanitation problems, chiefly the annual flooding during monsoon season due to unplanned urbanisation, destruction of wetlands and poor city governance.

But experts are warning that if the authorities here don’t take serious measures to address these issues soon, within a decade, every major thoroughfare in the city will be inundated and a majority of neighborhoods will end up underwater after heavy precipitation.

A 42-mm rainfall in ninety minutes is not unusual for monsoon season, but the city will face far worse in the future due to expected global temperature increases.

“If the present trend of city governance continues, all city streets will be flooded during monsoon in a decade, intensifying the suffering of city dwellers, and people will be compelled to leave the city,” urban planner Dr. Maksudur Rahman told IPS.

He predicted that about 50-60 percent of the city will be inundated in ten years if it experiences even a moderate rainfall.

• Bloomberg notes the rail boom in Bangladesh, looks at the fall in the value of the pound, notes a German proposal to give young Britons German citizenship and observes Spanish concern over giving Scotland a voice, looks at competition between Paris and Frankfurt to get jobs from the City of London, looks at how a Chinese takeover of an American ham company worked well, and observes that revised statistics show a much rockier economic history in Argentina.


• Bloomberg View notes that Merkel is Britain's best hope for lenient terms and compares Brexit to the Baltic break from the Soviet Union.


• The Globe and Mail notes continuing problems with the implementation of tidal turbines on the Bay of Fundy.


• MacLean's notes that pride marchers in the Manitoba city of Steinbach can walk on the street, and looks at the impact of immigrant investment on Vancouver's housing market.


• National Geographic notes the endangerment of Antarctica's penguins.


• Open Democracy compares Brexit and the breakup of the former Soviet Union, looks at water shortages in Armenia, and examines the impact of Brexit on Ireland.


• The Chicago Tribune looks at urban violence.


• Universe Today notes the Dutch will be going to the Moon with the Chinese.

• CBC has a heartwarming story about a cat, Sherry, who made it to Canada alongside his owners.


• The Inter Press Service reports on how development pressures are threatening the last of Bangladesh's tigers.


• National Geographic notes the short life expectancy of lions which leave their Kenyan reserves and come into contact with human beings.