Precarious finances: 38% of Europeans no longer eat three meals a day

By Sudesh Baniya

Published on 26/11/2023 -More than half of Europeans say their budget has tightened over the past three years, according to a recent study.

Rising prices have pushed almost one-third of Europeans into a "precarious" financial situation, a recent survey has found. 

The second European Barometer on Poverty and Precariousness examined Europeans' ability to make purchases and found that it has declined over the past three years, forcing a majority of them skip meals and resort to making difficult financial choices. 

Of the 10,000 surveyed by Ipsos for French Secours Populaire, 29% said their financial situation was "precarious" and any unexpected expense would make their balance tip. 

• Real food inflation in Europe: Which countries are hit the hardest?

Nearly one in two Europeans think that they face a high risk of falling into a precarious situation in the next few months, succumbing to rising prices and relatively stagnant pay. The 2021 at-risk-of-poverty rate for the total population of the EU stood at 17%, as per Eurostat.

Only 15% said they were confident and did not feel the need to pay attention to their everyday expenses. 

Difficult finances force complicated choices

A vast majority of Europeans have already had to compromise on their choices due to difficult financial conditions, according to the survey results. 

Rampant inflation in almost every sector forced these "complicated choices," which include skipping a meal despite being hungry. Almost one in three Europeans said they have skipped a meal when hungry – with Greece and Moldova having particularly high numbers.

Other compromises include not turning heaters on, borrowing money and not treating a health problem in the face of the rising costs.

A survey conducted by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) in June found 5.7 million low-income households in the UK lacking enough money for food, which it called a "horrendous new normal".

• Nearly 1 in 12 Italians live in ‘absolute poverty’ due to higher inflation, report finds
• ECB: Eurozone inflation could pick up, growth will remain weak

From only being able to buy food which is discounted to turning to food banks run by large associations to feed themselves, rising food prices have had varied – yet sizable – effects on food habits, according to the survey.

Of the people surveyed, 38% say they are no longer able to have three meals a day on a regular basis, while only 42% said they have never skipped their breakfast, lunch, and dinner due to financial constraints. 

The severity of the situation was reflected in a number of parents' answers with some saying they have had to limit their own eating to provide for their children. 

21% of the parents surveyed said they have experience at least one instance of "not eating enough" in order to feed their offspring. 

Majority worried about coping with inflation

Although rising inflation figures have, in fact, started to stall, increased food and ingredient prices have not yet fallen, hence the continued, diminished ability to buy produce. 

Europe’s inflation figures tripled in 2022, marking the highest growth rate of all time on the back of towering consumer prices for housing, water, gas, and other charges - which increased by 18% in a year.

Not only did many Europeans say their financial condition was extremely difficult, but also admitted that they were at the knife edge when it came to dealing with inflation.

Over half of those questioned, across most countries, said they were worried about coping with inflation, fearing an increase in food, energy, and miscellaneous expenses.

According to the study, 62% worry about soaring food prices, while unexpected expenses and gas prices worry 59% of the surveyed population.

TRANSGENDER
How Nazi Germany Persecuted Transgender People

IMAGES: ERIC SCHWAB/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES; ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY IMAGES

New research shows how transgender Germans suffered under Hitler's regime.

LAURIE MARHOEFER
NOVEMBER 25 2023 10:00 AM EST

In the fall of 2022, a German court heard an unusual case.

It was a civil lawsuit that grew out of a feud on Twitter about whether transgender people were victims of the Holocaust. Though there is no longer much debate about whether gay men and lesbians were persecuted, there’s been very little scholarship on trans people during this period.

The court took expert statements from historians before issuing an opinion that essentially acknowledges that trans people were victimized by the Nazi regime.

This is an important case. It was the first time a court acknowledged the possibility that trans people were persecuted in Nazi Germany. It was followed a few months later by the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, formally releasing a statement recognizing trans and cisgender queer people as victims of fascism.

Up until the past few years, there had been little research on trans people under the Nazi regime. Historians like myself are now uncovering more cases, like that of Toni Simon.
Being trans during the Weimar Republic

In 1933, the year that Hitler took power, the police in Essen, Germany, revoked Toni Simon’s permit to dress as a woman in public. Simon, who was in her mid-40s, had been living as a woman for many years

The Weimar Republic, the more tolerant democratic government that existed before Hitler, recognized the rights of trans people, though in a begrudging, limited way. Under the republic, police granted trans people permits like the one Simon had.

In the 1930s, transgender people were called “transvestites,” which is rarely a preferred term for trans people today, but at the time approximated what’s now meant by “transgender.” The police permits were called “transvestite certificates,” and they exempted a person from the laws against cross-dressing. Under the Republic, trans people could also change their names legally, though they had to pick from a short, preapproved list.

In Berlin, transgender people published several magazines and had a political club. Some glamorous trans women worked at the internationally famous Eldorado cabaret. The sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, who ran Berlin’s Institute for Sexual Science, advocated for the rights of transgender people.

The rise of Nazi Germany destroyed this relatively open environment. The Nazis shut down the magazines, the Eldorado and Hirschfeld’s institute. Most people who held “transvestite certificates,” as Toni Simon did, had them revoked or watched helplessly as police refused to honor them.

That was just the beginning of the trouble.


Nazi banners hang in the windows of the former Eldorado nightclub. 

Landesarchiv Berlin/U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum


‘Draconian measures’ against trans people

In Nazi Germany, transgender people were not used as a political wedge issue in the way they are today. There was little public discussion of trans people.

What the Nazis did say about them, however, was chilling.

The author of a 1938 book on “the problem of transvestitism” wrote that before Hitler was in power, there was not much that could be done about transgender people, but that now, in Nazi Germany, they could be put in concentration camps or subjected to forced castration. That was good, he believed, because the “asocial mindset” of trans people and their supposedly frequent “criminal activity … justifies draconian measures by the state.”

Toni Simon was a brave person. I first came across her police file when I was researching trans people at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The Essen police knew Simon as the sassy proprietor of an underground club where LGBTQ people gathered. In the mid 1930s, she was hauled into court for criticizing the Nazi regime. By then, the Gestapo had had enough of her. Simon was a danger to youth, a Gestapo officer wrote. A concentration camp was “absolutely necessary.”

I am not certain what happened to Simon. Her file ends abruptly, with the Gestapo planning her arrest. But there are no actual arrest papers. Hopefully, she evaded the police.

Other trans women did not escape. At the Hamburg State Archive, I read about H. Bode, who often went out in public dressed as a woman and dated men. Under the Weimar Republic, she held a transvestite certificate. Nazi police went after her for “cross-dressing” and for having sex with men. They considered her male, so her relationships were homosexual and illegal. They sent her to the concentration camp Buchenwald, where she was murdered.

Liddy Bacroff of Hamburg also had a transvestite pass under the Republic. She made her living selling sex to male clients. After 1933, the police went after her. They wrote that she was “fundamentally a transvestite” and a “morals criminal of the worst sort.” She too was sent to a camp, Mauthausen, and murdered.
Trans Germans previously misgendered

For a long time, the public didn’t know the stories of trans people in Nazi Germany.

Earlier histories tended to misgender trans women, which was odd: When you read the records of their police interrogations, they are often remarkably clear about their gender identity, even though they were not helping their cases at all by doing so.

Bacroff, for example, told the police, “My sense of my sex is fully and completely that of a woman.”

There was also confusion caused by a few cases that, by chance, came to light first. In these cases, police acted less violently. For example, there is a well-known case from Berlin where police renewed a trans man’s “transvestite certificate” after he spent some months in a concentration camp. Historians initially took this case to be representative. Now that we have a lot more cases, we can see that it is an outlier. Police normally revoked the certificates.

A through line to today

Today, right-wing attacks against trans people in the U.S. are intensifying.

Though the American Academy of Pediatrics and every major medical association approves gender-affirming health care for trans kids, Republican politicians have banned it in 19 states, with even more moving to prohibit it.

Gender-affirming medicine is now over 100 years old – and it has roots in Weimar Germany. It had never before been legally restricted in the U.S. Yet Missouri has essentially banned it for adults, and other states are trying to restrict adult care. A host of other anti-trans bills are moving through state legislatures.

I find it fitting, then, that “A Transparent Musical” recently premiered in Los Angeles. In it, fabulously dressed trans Berliners sing and dance in defiance of Nazi thugs.

It’s a reminder that attacks on trans people are nothing new – and that many of them are straight out of the Nazi playbook.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story noted that the author’s testimony was submitted to a German court. While the testimony was submitted to a lawyer arguing in the court case, that lawyer did not ultimately submit it to the court. In addition, the story was edited in the third paragraph to more accurately reflect the decision of the German court.

Laurie Marhoefer is a professor of history at the University of Washington.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Protection of Children on Social Media Platforms

  Nov 17,2023 |

By Kyaw Thein Lwin

 

In Today’s digital world, screen-based media de­vices and social media usage have become integral parts of children’s everyday lives. Chil­dren under the age of 18 use social media platforms such as Meta (Facebook), Messenger, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube through screen-based media devices and the daily screen time rates of social me­dia have increased significantly among children.

 

How does social media affect children?

Social media can have both positive and negative effects on children. On the one hand, it func­tions as a digital space for sociali­zation, providing children with op­portunities to connect with friends and family members, facilitating communication and connectivity. Besides this, it also serves as a platform for children to learn new ideas and information through ed­ucational resources, and it allows them to express their ideas and talents through posts, videos, and other forms of content creation.

 

On the other hand, children have limited life experience, which may pose challenges in dis­cerning what is good and bad, and their lack of experience can also have a negative effect on them. Some of these effects include Cy­berbullying, Online enticement, Sextortion, Identity theft and Screen addiction, and more.

 

What is happening regarding children’s use of social me­dia?

The 2022 survey conducted by the Pew Research Centre re­veals that 46 per cent of children aged 13 to 17 have been bullied or harassed online, and Facebook was identified as the source of cyberbullying for 75 per cent of online harassment victims in the United States in 2021. Cyberbul­lying has a significant impact on children’s emotional well-being and can also affect their academic performance.

 

An estimated 500,000 online predators are active each day. They contact children through social media platforms and gam­ing websites, coercing them into producing self-generated child abuse images. Children aged 12 to 15 are at risk of being victimized through grooming or manipula­tion by adults they meet online, and 82 per cent of online pred­atory incidents occur through communication on social media platforms.

 

The social media platform has become a commercial land­scape, with 77 per cent of small businesses using it to connect with their customers, and the market is expected to reach a value of $207 billion in 2023. Con­sequently, children now have the ability to order products with a simple click without consulting their parents. This raises con­cerns about the authenticity and legitimacy of the advertised items.

 

Do we need a law to regulate children’s use of social media platforms?

All major social media plat­forms have implemented their own self-regulatory measures to govern the content and user  be­haviour on their own platforms, including community guidelines, advertising standards, violation detection, age restrictions, pri­vacy settings, reporting abuse (such as nudity, hate speech and threats) and taking appropriate actions. Nevertheless, the ques­tion remains: Can these self-reg­ulatory measures effectively pro­tect children on their platforms?

 

On 4 October 2021, the whis­tleblower Frances Haugen, who had worked as a product manag­er at tech companies, including Facebook, testified before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Trans­port. She revealed that although social media platforms imple­ment self-regulatory measures, there are several weaknesses and criticisms associated with these efforts.

 

According to the findings re­port of the UK Parliament’s Sci­ence and Technology Committee, which was released on 31 Janu­ary 2019, social media companies should have a formal legal duty of care to their users under the age of 18. The existing patchwork of regulations is seen as inadequate and insufficient in creating a safe online environment for children. The report also recommends the government enact new legislation to establish a statutory code of practice for social media compa­nies, thereby providing consistent guidelines for content reporting practices and moderation mech­anisms.

 

What specific provisions are included in the new social media laws?

On 23 March 2023, the gov­ernor of Utah signed two new bills, HB152 and SB311, to pro­tect children from using social media platforms. Under HB152, social media companies are obli­gated to verify the age of a Utah resident who seeks to maintain or open a social media account. Additionally, they are required to obtain the consent of a parent or guardian before allowing a Utah resident under the age of 18 to maintain or open an account. The bill also prohibits social me­dia companies from allowing a Utah resident to open an account if that person does not meet age requirements under state or fed­eral law. Furthermore, it imposes specific obligations on certain so­cial media companies regarding accounts held by Utah children. These obligations include pro­hibiting direct messaging with certain accounts, excluding the children’s account from search results, refraining from display­ing advertising, abstaining from collecting, sharing, or using per­sonal information from the ac­count (with certain exceptions), avoiding the targeting or sug­gestion of ads, accounts, or con­tent, and imposing limitations on access hours, which can be overridden by parental or guard­ian direction. In addition, the bill requires social media companies to restrict Utah children’s ac­count access between the hours of 10:30 pm and 6:30 am, and it re­quires these companies to grant parents or guardians access to the content and interactions of accounts held by Utah residents under the age of 18.

 

Under HB311, the bill pro­hibits a social media company from using a design or feature that causes a minor to have an addiction to the company’s social media platform. Moreover, the bill authorizes a private right of action to collect attorney fees and damages from a social media company for harm incurred by a minor’s use of the company’s social media platform.

 

On 12 April 2023, the gover­nor of Arkansas signed the Social Media Safety Act (SB396). The bill is similar to Utah’s HB152 and imposes certain require­ments on social media compa­nies operating within the state. The bill states that social media companies shall not permit Ar­kansan users who are minors to be account holders on a social media company’s social media platform unless the minor has the express consent of a parent or legal guardian. Additionally, the companies are required to implement age verification for the use of social media.

 

Conclusion

The self-regulatory meas­ures implemented by social me­dia companies are insufficient to fully safeguard children. It is crucial for us to comprehend the benefits and risks associ­ated with online opportunities for children. Therefore, the au­thor suggests that social media companies, policymakers and parents need to collaborate to protect our children from the negative effects of social media.

 

Reference:

(1) SB311 Social Media Regula­tion Amendments, Utah State Legislature

(2) The Social Media Safety Act (Senate Bill 396),

(3) Online Predators, Child Crime Prevention & Safety Centre

 

One of The World's Rarest Mammals Was Just Born at a Zoo in England

NATURE26 November 2023

ByCARLY CASSELLA

(Chester Zoo)

One of the rarest mammals in the world, a black rhino, was just born in broad daylight at a zoo in England, and the footage is breathtaking.

For such a large newborn, the female calf landed on the soft, sandy floor of its enclosure with surprising aplomb.

In a recent press release, zookeepers at Chester Zoo in Cheshire, England said the calf has barely left her mother's side since she entered the world on Sunday, November 12.

"We'd been eagerly awaiting this birth for 15 long months and, as it's quite unusual for a rhino to give birth in daylight hours, we really didn't expect it to happen right in front of us as we were going about our day," says Chester Zoo's rhino team manager, Emma Evision.

"To witness the calf safely entering the world, in front of our very own eyes, was just the most incredible privilege."

The new rhino has not yet received a name, but her mother is called Zuri. Evison says the calf is healthy, well-fed, and "very inquisitive and full of energy".

Her species as a whole, however, is suffering. Black rhinos (Diceros bicornis) in Africa once used to number in the tens of thousands, and yet today, there are only around 6,500 individuals left in the wild.

Several subspecies have already gone extinct, and most of those that still exist are critically endangered due to ongoing poaching and habitat loss.

Zuri's newborn calf trotting along at Chester Zoo. (Chester Zoo)

Only recently were eastern black rhinos (Diceros bicornis michaeli) pulled back from the brink of extinction.

This is the subspecies that Zuri and her calf belong to.

"Sadly this is a species that, for more than a century, has been hunted down and poached for its horn before being sold on the illegal wildlife markets," says Evison.

"This precious newborn's arrival is another positive step in safeguarding the species, which is what the endangered species breeding programme in European conservation zoos that we're a leading part of is striving to do."

Experts at Chester Zoo have been breeding black rhinos for years now, in a cooperative attempt with other European zoos to maintain a genetically healthy population of black rhinos in Africa.

One of the tricks to Chester Zoo's success is the careful monitoring of reproductive hormones in rhino dung. This is how the zookeepers figure out which males and females should date each other and when.

In 2019, officials at Chester Zoo helped facilitate an ambitious project that returned a large group of eastern black rhinos, bred at European zoos, to a national park in Rwanda.

Today, fewer than 600 eastern black rhinos are found across Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda. While these populations seem to be slowly increasing after the implementation of intense protection measures, time is not on the species' side.

Each black rhino mother can have just one calf at a time and their gestation period, or pregnancy, lasts for up to 16 months.

As poaching and habitat loss continues, some scientists think captive breeding programs are crucial for the species' continued survival.

"Zuri and her new arrival is testament to the unwavering dedication of conservationists here at Chester, and around the world, who are working to safeguard these incredible animals and ensure that they thrive long into the future," says Mike Jordan, the director of animals and plants at Chester Zoo.

Even in the face of so much tragedy, it's hard not to feel hopeful when watching Zuri and her calf trotting along, side by side.