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Police Arrest Man In Paris Soldier Stabbing, Say Attack Was Religiously Motivated

French police probe links to London's machete murder of a British soldier three days earlier.

FRANCE 24, LE MONDE (France)

Worldcrunch

PARIS –A 22-year-old man was arrested at dawn Wednesday on suspicion of being the culprit in the recent stabbing a French soldier in the wake of the London slaying of a British military guard.

Sources close to the authorities indicate the suspect is a “Muslim radical,” although the government remains careful to make any correlations with the London slashers, reports Le Monde.

Prosecutors at a midday press conference said the suspect confessed to the stabbing in the outlying Parisian business district, and said it was religiously motivated, France 24 reported.

The French soldier Cedric Cordiez, who was stabbed in the neck while patrolling a transport hub in Paris, has since been released from the hospital.

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La Défense RER station where the events occurred (Greenski)

French Interior Minister Manuel Valls remained prudent regarding any links with the fatal May 22 machete attack against a 22-year-old British soldier by men declaring it was revenge for wars in Muslim countries. Still Valls, as quoted by Le Monde, added that “someone tried to kill a soldier because he was a soldier.”

The suspect, who was apprehended at the home of a relative, has a criminal record (theft, robbery, weapons charges…). The investigators say they were able to identify him using fingerprints left at the scene, reports France 24.

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Society

What's Spoiling The Kids: The Big Tech v. Bad Parenting Debate

Without an extended family network, modern parents have sought to raise happy kids in a "hostile" world. It's a tall order, when youngsters absorb the fears (and devices) around them like a sponge.

Image of a kid wearing a blue striped sweater, using an ipad.

Children exposed to technology at a very young age are prominent today.

Julián de Zubiría Samper

-Analysis-

BOGOTÁ — A 2021 report from the United States (the Youth Risk Behavior Survey) found that 42% of the country's high-school students persistently felt sad and 22% had thought about suicide. In other words, almost half of the country's young people are living in despair and a fifth of them have thought about killing themselves.

Such chilling figures are unprecedented in history. Many have suggested that this might be the result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but sadly, we can see depression has deeper causes, and the pandemic merely illustrated its complexity.

I have written before on possible links between severe depression and the time young people spend on social media. But this is just one aspect of the problem. Today, young people suffer frequent and intense emotional crises, and not just for all the hours spent staring at a screen. Another, possibly more important cause may lie in changes to the family composition and authority patterns at home.

Firstly: Families today have fewer members, who communicate less among themselves.

Young people marry at a later age, have fewer children and many opt for personal projects and pets instead of having children. Families are more diverse and flexible. In many countries, the number of children per woman is close to or less than one (Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong among others).

In Colombia, women have on average 1.9 children, compared to 7.6 in 1970. Worldwide, women aged 15 to 49 years have on average 2.4 children, or half the average figure for 1970. The changes are much more pronounced in cities and among middle and upper-income groups.

Of further concern today is the decline in communication time at home, notably between parents and children. This is difficult to quantify, but reasons may include fewer household members, pervasive use of screens, mothers going to work, microwave ovens that have eliminated family cooking and meals and, thanks to new technologies, an increase in time spent on work, even at home. Our society is addicted to work and devotes little time to minors.

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