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Israel

Israel Releases Palestinian Prisoners Just Before Peace Talks

BBC, GUARDIAN, TELEGRAPH (UK), AL JAZEERA

Worldcrunch

JERUSALEM - Israel has released 26 Palestinian prisoners hours before the opening of renewed peace talks Wednesday. Eleven of the prisoners released in the West Bank were welcomed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, while the other 15 were met by cheering crowds in Gaza.

A total 104 long-term prisoners are to be released over the next nine months, the Guardian reports. "We congratulate ourselves and our families for our brothers who left the darkness of the prisons for the light of the sun of freedom," Abbas said. "We say to them and to you that the remainder are on their way, these are just the first."

One of the prisoners released, Taher Zayoud, from Jenin, said: “I salute the great Palestinian people who stayed with us. They are the ones who secured our freedom and supported our cause”, the Telegraph reports.

A BBC correspondent noted how the prisoners are seen as heroes of the Palestinian cause, while regarded as terrorists on the Israeli side. Israeli families of the victims of the released prisoners, most of whom were convicted of murder or accessory to murder, were denied the appeal against their release and held protests and vigils. Palestinian families of the prisoners say that they are a product of their time, the oppression they have faced, and the fact that Palestinians are killed every day, BBC explains.

Renewed peace talks between Palestine and Israel resume today under the shadow of Israel’s recent approval of building nearly 1,000 new settler homes in occupied East Jerusalem and 900 homes to be built in Gilo, the Guardian reports. These settlements are considered illegal under international law and put the negotiations at risk. BBC explains that US Secretary of State John Kerry urged Palestinians "not to react adversely" to the settlement announcements. He went on to say that US opposition had been "communicated... very clearly to Israel".

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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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