I wonder what horrors lurk under the story of Lee Kaplan and the 12 girls removed from his house a couple of days ago.

The girls were found without birth certificates and other public records have not yet been located, according to authorities. Lee Kaplan, 51, faces a number of charges including statutory sexual assault and aggravated indecent assault for allegedly fathering two of the children with the oldest girl found, now 18.

When authorities raided Kaplan’s Feasterville home on Friday after receiving a tip, the children were found hiding in the basement and in a chicken coop, among other places, according to Lower Southampton Director of Public Safety Robert Hoopes.

The oldest is 18 and two or more of … Read the rest

Margaret Atwood has won the 2016 PEN-Pinter prize.

Margaret Atwood has said that she is humbled to win an award from PEN celebrating her political activism, describing herself as “a stand-in for the thousands of people around the world who speak and act against [human rights] abuses”.

The PEN Pinter prize was set up seven years ago in memory of the Nobel prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter, and is given to a writer of outstanding literary merit who, in the words of Pinter himself on winning the Nobel, casts an “unflinching, unswerving” gaze upon the world and shows a “fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies”.

The Booker prize-winning Canadian author

From Cross River State, Nigeria:

Two children age, 10 and 7, were this morning, rescued from being murdered by some members of Divine Zion of God Church Ikot Abasi Effiom district of Akpabuyo LGA.

Led by one Prophet David Effiom Zion and some members of their family, the children were accused by their cousin of being witches and allegedly snatching her baby in a dream.

The stigma that confronted the children since they were branded witches took on a new dimension when the children were taken to the forest, tied to a tree, battered and assaulted with a machete by some members of the family, leaving them with cuts and bruises all over their bodies.

This happened on the

Guest post by Maureen Brian, originally a reply to a question about whether Brexit is binding or not.

The majority in Parliament is certainly for remaining though the whole process seems to have unhinged one or two minds so that it’s difficult to say who would vote which way after the referendum! Some may see it as morally binding: others will not and that’s whichever way the result goes.

All the legislation supposedly “imposed by Brussels” operates through laws passed by Westminster. That includes the treaties at various stages of the EU’s development. In many cases passing that legislation repealed earlier UK legislation so that we can’t just roll them all into a ball and repeal the lot. That would … Read the rest

Ew, a woman. Deutsche Welle:

Social media users flooded German public broadcaster ZDF’s sites after Friday’s Italy-Sweden match, not to voice complaints about the game, but to bemoan the broadcaster’s female commentator.

Claudia Neumann, a reporter for German public broadcaster ZDF, became the first female play-by-play announcer for this year’s men’s European Championships in France.

But her role as the match’s main commentator enraged numerous soccer fans. Many of whom posted complaints about her “annoying voice” while others said women have no place doing sports commentary for men’s soccer. One Twitter user wrote: “Women shouldn’t commentate men’s soccer. It doesn’t fit. Annoying. Period.”

So true. And people who don’t commit murder shouldn’t report on murders, and people not in … Read the rest

News from Lahore:

Relatives slit the throat of a young mother who was pregnant with her second child after she married against their will near Lahore, officials said Friday, the latest in a spate of so-called “honour killings”.

Muqaddas Bibi, 22, married Taufiq Ahmed three years ago in defiance of her family, who considered a marriage for love — rather than an arranged marriage — shameful, police investigator Mohammad Arshad told AFP.

Bibi’s ties with her family were severed after the marriage, Arshad said, but her mother and brother allegedly approached her at a clinic where she was having a check-up on Thursday and convinced her to come home, saying they accepted her decision.

Local police station chief Gohar

Clementine Ford on Facebook:

Catherine Deveny has just been given a 30 day ban for posting this status. Something like this is removed while posts celebrating violence against women are just a laugh m8.

Maybe if Dev had made a horrible joke about rape or beating women, it would have been considered okay by the ‘community standards’.

Facebook Community Standards are a sour joke.… Read the rest

Jo Cox wrote a public Facebook post on Tuesday.

If, as the foreign secretary claims, “close relations with Gulf countries are vital in keeping Britain safe”, isn’t it also time to use our close relationship with Saudi Arabia to end the slaughter of Yemeni children?

Fifteen months ago the Yemeni conflict escalated, when the Saudi led-coalition launched a military operation in support of the government against Houthi opposition forces. Half of Yemen’s population now lack access to the most basic items – food, water and medicine. And with violence rife across the country, the death toll continues to rise.

Life for children in Yemen has always been tough but the recent conflict has made it unbearable. Children represent one third

Juliet Samuel at the Telegraph – yes really – says the murder of Jo Cox is far-right terrorism.

The Quilliam Foundation, one of Britain’s foremost anti-extremism think tanks, has been the first major organisation to call this dreadful event by its name: an act of nationalist far-Right terrorism.

Why does it matter what we call it?

Because calling it by its name shakes us out of our complacency and it helps us to understand how we should react. There’s a tendency to think of Britain as a moderate, sensible, reasonable place. Until yesterday, we had been spared the horrifying extremist attacks that have recently been taking place in other western countries. And Britain is mostly a safe and moderate

Originally a comment by Claire on A noxious brew.

When I moved from the UK to the US, several years ago, I was genuinely shocked at the amount of open racism I saw from just people on the street right up through the rhetoric of politicians. I was appalled and admittedly a little complacent – I didn’t think the UK was some racism-free utopia, but it seemed considerably better by comparison.

The EU referendum campaign has opened my eyes to a seething morass of racial animosity that apparently was right there beneath the surface the whole time. It’s horrifying – what has happened to my country of birth in the years since I moved away? I hadn’t even planned … Read the rest