Recommended Sunday Reading—June 11

Journalist as assassin in Ukraine

In 2006, the Russian government legalised targeted killings abroad of people posing terrorist threats, resuming a Soviet-era practice. But the Kremlin has never acknowledged using the authority granted under the law and has vehemently denied specific accusations, including those in Ukraine…Under the guise of a journalist, the assassin, Artur Denisultanov-Kurmakayev, tried to murder Amina Okuyeva and her husband, Adam Osmayev, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said. The attack was the third high-profile killing or attempted killing in Kiev that the Ukranian authorities have attributed to the Russian security services, but the first in which the accused killer impersonated a journalist. In The New York Times.

Are we losing the war against bacteria?

The efficacy of the world’s antibiotics is quickly decaying—the drugs we’re using to treat infections are working less and less. If we continue at this rate without intervention, we may find that there is not a single antibiotic left to treat any type of bacterial infection.US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that in the US alone there are about 23,000 people who die every year from antibiotic-resistant infections.a 2015 study published in Nature found that global antibiotic consumption went up 30% between 2000 and 2010. In the BBC.

History, memory, duty and patriotism

We see an enactment of the more cynical assessment of the great British novelist Aldous Huxley, “that men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.”…the French remembered their deepest republican principles—democracy, liberty, equality—while the Americans, who have often been described as serial amnesiacs, and in the case of Trump especially the conservatives, did not remember theirs…De Gaulle, who led the resistance, was in fact from the far right, but he grasped the difference between patriotism and nationalism. It goes back to the Faust legend—you can’t make a deal with the devil (i.e. evil) and come out clean. In The Friday Times.

Visa Ganapathy busy sifting through prayers!

At least two other places of worship in the country attract a large number of visa seeking devotees. In Punjab, a gurudwara is believed to help those planning to immigrate to other countries. Once the wish is fulfilled, the devotees offer aircraft to the gurudwara. People believe that a visit to a temple in Telangana is a sureshot success to get visa to go abroad. Believers throng this place—popularly known as Visa Balaji temple—at Chilkur in Ranga Reddy district, about 20 km from Hyderabad. In the Deccan Herald.

No winner in Nanavati morality tale

Urban India is rapidly coming face to face with marital infidelity. Hindustan Times reported in 2015 that divorces had doubled or tripled in major cities in the three previous years; the presence of a third person was often the reason. The Times of India reported a survey of 75,000 people, four-fifths married, in 2014 that showed an astounding 61 per cent of men and 76 per cent of women did not find infidelity particularly sinful or immoral. In The Telegraph.