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🔗 Human rights 🔗 Russia 🔗 Crime 🔗 Religion 🔗 Islam 🔗 LGBT studies 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Chechnya 🔗 Discrimination 🔗 Correction and Detention Facilities 🔗 Sexology and sexuality

Anti-gay purges in the Chechen Republic, a part of the Russian Federation, have included forced disappearances — secret abductions, imprisonment, torture — and extrajudicial killing by authorities targeting persons based on their perceived sexual orientation. An unknown number of people, who authorities detained on suspicion of being gay or bisexual, have reportedly died after being held in what human rights groups and eyewitnesses have called concentration camps.

Allegations were initially reported on 1 April 2017 in Novaya Gazeta, a Russian-language opposition newspaper, which reported that since February 2017 over 100 men had allegedly been detained and tortured and at least three had died in an extrajudicial killing. The paper, citing its sources in the Chechen special services, called the wave of detentions a "prophylactic sweep". The journalist who first reported on the subject went into hiding. There have been calls for reprisals against journalists who report on the situation.

As news spread of Chechen authorities' actions, which have been described as part of a systematic anti-LGBT purge, Russian and international activists scrambled to evacuate survivors of the camps and other vulnerable Chechens but were met with difficulty obtaining visas to conduct them safely beyond Russia.

The reports of the persecution were met with a variety of reactions worldwide. The Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov denied not only the occurrence of any persecution but also the existence of gay men in Chechnya, adding that such people would be killed by their own families. Officials in Moscow were skeptical, although in late May the Russian government reportedly agreed to send an investigative team to Chechnya. Numerous national leaders and other public figures in the West condemned Chechnya's actions, and protests were held in Russia and elsewhere. A report released in December 2018 by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) confirmed claims that persecution of LGBT persons had taken place and was ignored by authorities.

On 11 January 2019, it was reported that another 'gay purge' had begun in the country in December 2018, with several gay men and women being detained. The Russian LGBT Network believes that around 40 persons were detained and two killed.

🔗 Physics 🔗 Spectroscopy

Silicon drift detectors (SDDs) are X-ray radiation detectors used in x-ray spectrometry (XRF and EDS) and electron microscopy. Their chief characteristics compared with other X-ray detectors are:

• high count rates
• comparatively high energy resolution (e.g. 125 eV for Mn Kα wavelength)
• Peltier cooling

🔗 United States 🔗 Numismatics 🔗 Numismatics/American currency

The half cent was the smallest denomination of United States coin ever minted. It was first minted in 1793 and last minted in 1857. It was minted with five different designs.

🔗 Visual arts 🔗 Belgium

Netherlandish Proverbs (Dutch: Nederlandse Spreekwoorden; also called Flemish Proverbs, The Blue Cloak or The Topsy Turvy World) is a 1559 oil-on-oak-panel painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder that depicts a scene in which humans and, to a lesser extent, animals and objects, offer literal illustrations of Dutch-language proverbs and idioms.

Running themes in Bruegel's paintings are the absurdity, wickedness and foolishness of humans, and this is no exception. The painting's original title, The Blue Cloak or The Folly of the World, indicates that Bruegel's intent was not just to illustrate proverbs, but rather to catalog human folly. Many of the people depicted show the characteristic blank features that Bruegel used to portray fools.

His son, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, specialised in making copies of his father's work and painted at least 16 copies of Netherlandish Proverbs. Not all versions of the painting, by father or son, show exactly the same proverbs and they also differ in other minor details.

🔗 New Zealand

Taumatawhakatangi­hangakoauauotamatea­turipukakapikimaunga­horonukupokaiwhen­uakitanatahu is a hill near Porangahau, south of Waipukurau in southern Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. The height of the hill is 305 metres (1,001 ft). The hill is notable primarily for its unusually long name, which is of Māori origin; it is often shortened to Taumata for brevity. It has gained a measure of fame as it is the longest place name found in any English-speaking country, and possibly the longest place name in the world; according to World Atlas. The name of the hill (with 85 characters) has also been listed in the Guinness World Records as the longest place name. Other versions of the name, including longer ones, are also sometimes used.

🔗 Technology 🔗 Africa 🔗 Finance & Investment 🔗 Africa/Tanzania 🔗 Afghanistan 🔗 Africa/Kenya

M-Pesa (M for mobile, pesa is Swahili for money) is a mobile phone-based money transfer, financing and microfinancing service, launched in 2007 by Vodafone for Safaricom and Vodacom, the largest mobile network operators in Kenya and Tanzania. It has since expanded to Afghanistan, South Africa, India and in 2014 to Romania and in 2015 to Albania. M-Pesa allows users to deposit, withdraw, transfer money and pay for goods and services (Lipa na M-Pesa) easily with a mobile device.

The service allows users to deposit money into an account stored on their cell phones, to send balances using PIN-secured SMS text messages to other users, including sellers of goods and services, and to redeem deposits for regular money. Users are charged a small fee for sending and withdrawing money using the service.

M-Pesa is a branchless banking service; M-Pesa customers can deposit and withdraw money from a network of agents that includes airtime resellers and retail outlets acting as banking agents.

M-Pesa has spread quickly, and by 2010 had become the most successful mobile-phone-based financial service in the developing world. By 2012, a stock of about 17 million M-Pesa accounts had been registered in Kenya. By June 2016, a total of 7 million M-Pesa accounts have been opened in Tanzania by Vodacom. The service has been lauded for giving millions of people access to the formal financial system and for reducing crime in otherwise largely cash-based societies.

🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military aviation 🔗 Military history/World War II 🔗 Military history/German military history 🔗 Military history/European military history 🔗 Military history/British military history

The Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler incident occurred on 20 December 1943, when, after a successful bomb run on Bremen, 2nd Lt Charles "Charlie" Brown's B-17 Flying Fortress (named "Ye Olde Pub") was severely damaged by German fighters. Luftwaffe pilot Franz Stigler had the opportunity to shoot down the crippled bomber but did not do so. After an extensive search by Brown, the two pilots met each other 50 years later and developed a friendship that lasted until Stigler's death in March 2008.

🔗 Espionage 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Intelligence 🔗 Sweden 🔗 Military history/Nordic military history 🔗 Military history/National militaries 🔗 Military history/European military history

The National Defence Radio Establishment (Swedish: Försvarets radioanstalt, FRA) is a Swedish government agency organised under the Ministry of Defence. The two main tasks of FRA are signals intelligence (SIGINT), and support to government authorities and state-owned companies regarding computer security.

The FRA is not allowed to initialize any surveillance on their own, and operates purely on assignment from the Government, the Government Offices, the Armed Forces, the Swedish National Police Board and Swedish Security Service (SÄPO). Decisions and oversight regarding information interception is provided by the Defence Intelligence Court and the Defence Intelligence Commission; additional oversight regarding protection of privacy is provided by the Swedish Data Protection Authority.

🔗 Mathematics

In geometry, Prince Rupert's cube (named after Prince Rupert of the Rhine) is the largest cube that can pass through a hole cut through a unit cube, i.e. through a cube whose sides have length 1, without splitting the cube into two pieces. Its side length is approximately 6% larger than that of the unit cube through which it passes. The problem of finding the largest square that lies entirely within a unit cube is closely related, and has the same solution.

The original proposition posed by Prince Rupert of the Rhine was that a cube could be passed through a hole made in another cube of the same size without splitting the cube into two pieces.

🔗 Psychology 🔗 Education

Bloom's 2 sigma problem refers to an educational phenomenon observed by educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom and initially reported in 1984 in the journal Educational Researcher. Bloom found that the average student tutored one-to-one using mastery learning techniques performed two standard deviations better than students who learn via conventional instructional methods — that is, "the average tutored student was above 98% of the students in the control class". Additionally, the variation of the students' achievement changed: "about 90% of the tutored students ... attained the level of summative achievement reached by only the highest 20%" of the control class. Bloom's graduate students J. Anania and A. J. Burke conducted studies of this effect at different grade levels and in different schools, observing students with "great differences in cognitive achievement, attitudes, and academic self-concept".