Annalisa Merelli

When Misha Friedman started the photographic project that led to his newly-published book, Lyudmila and Natasha—Russian Lives, life was different for Russia’s LGBT community. That’s because he started shooting Natasha and her partner Lyudmila in Saint Petersburg in 2011, two years before Vladimir Putin signed article 6.21, the infamous “anti-gay propaganda” law. Banning the promotion of “non-traditional relationships,” the law created, through its vague wording, a grey area in which displays of affection or public statement related to same-sex relationships could lead to fines. In specific cases, banned behavior could even be penalized with jail time. Although homosexuality has been legal in post-Soviet Russia since 1993, article 6.21 had an immediate chilling effect on gay rights, creating an atmosphere of homophobia and even open violence against the LGBT community.

Amidst uncertainty that the crash of the Germanwings flight on Mar. 24 was not an accident, but a deliberate act by the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, who flew the Airbus into the ground, killing 150 people, at least one thing seems clear: this was not a terrorist act. Stating this was the German minister of interior, who found “no indications of any kind of terrorist background” to the crash. French interior minister had said on Mar. 25 that terrorism was not a likely hypothesis, but that no scenario could be excluded: but when it became clear that the co-pilot crashed the plane, and that the co-pilot had no “terrorist background,” the terror motive was ruled out.

The ongoing Ebola epidemic in West Africa, which has killed over 10,000 and is still ongoing—79 new cases were reported this week. Its persistence has resulted in a push for researching new treatments and the involvement of big pharmaceutical companies, which had previously been accused of delaying the research on an Ebola cure for profit concern. In particular the development of a vaccine against Ebola might be the most effective way to control future epidemics and, as vaccine expert Orin Levine told Quartz in February, “because of the urgency of the Ebola emergency in West Africa we’ve been able to really accelerate the timeline of development, so Ebola [vaccine] may be closer than we think.”

Depression affects an estimated 5% of the world population, according to the WHO, and is the leading cause of disability for both male and female workers (though it affects women 50% more than men). Despite its ubiquity, the disease is complex to understand, and to treat. The latest family of antidepressants was developed in the 1980s and drugs today, while improved, haven’t changed substantially since then.

A Germanwings Airbus A320 traveling from Barcelona to Düsseldorf crashed in the French Alps this morning shortly after sending a distress signal at 10:45am local time.

A recent study published in Evolution & Human Behavior has confirmed what Kim Kardashian’s #breaktheinternet phenomenon already suggested: men like women with curvy bottoms. In fact, the study suggests, they have liked them since prehistoric time, when there was very good reason to do so. The structure of the female hominid made her posture subject to a forward shift during pregnancies, so her spine ”evolved morphology to deal with this adaptive challenge: wedging in the third-to-last lumbar vertebra.” Essentially, a certain curve of the lower back would enable “ancestral women to better support, provide for, and carry out multiple pregnancies.”

What a loss for African literature—and literature tout court—that Nigerian Man Booker prize winner and author of Things Fall Apart. An undisputed titan—such was the consensus on Twitter, where hordes of his fans took to mourn the passing of a writer who had deeply influenced them and, undoubtedly, their understanding of Africa.

“I was branded as a tramp, tart, slut, whore, bimbo, and of course, That Woman,” said Monica Lewinsky, self-proclaimed patient zero of online harassment and cyber bullying, on the stage of the TED global conference, “Truth & Dare.”

In 1971, president Nixon declared a war on cancer. But if drug prices are any measure of success, Americans are surely losing: they pay 50-100% more for cancer drugs than patients globally.

An end to the most deadly Ebola outbreak in history seems to be in sight. No new cases have been recorded in Liberia for the past two weeks, and 116 new cases have emerged in Sierra Leone and Guinea in the week of Mar. 8, down from 132 the previous week. Currently, the target is to eliminate Ebola entirely in these countries by the end of April.

At a press conference earlier this week, Hillary Clinton addressed the growing controversy over her clandestine email server. She was less than convincing.

On the second anniversary of his election, pope Francis has just promulgated a universal extraordinary jubilee: beginning Dec. 8 (the day when Catholics celebrate the Immaculate conception), the “holy” doors of St. Peter’s in Rome will be opened to welcome repenting devotees and grant them God’s pardon.

On March 10, the latest chapter of Silvio Berlusconi’s never-ending judicial saga was written: Italy’s highest court upheld the acquittal from charges of having sex with Karima El Mahroug, an underage prostitute and—a much more serious crime in the Italian penal code—of abusing his official authority to demand that police release the girl, accused of theft, saying she was a niece of then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

In 1995, Hillary Clinton joined world leaders in Beijing for a United Nations conference on women. She delivered a powerful speech, calling for action toward achieving gender equality.

My Facebook newsfeed was a strange sight yesterday. People both in and outside India were sharing links to India’s Daughter, an unsettling BBC documentary that aired on Wednesday about the brutal gang-rape of a young woman on a Delhi bus in 2012. India had banned the film, but people had put it on YouTube and were sharing it on social media. As the hours went by, the Indian government (and later the BBC itself, for copyright reasons) chased down the stray links, and my timeline transformed from a long sequence of video previews of the film to a wall of disappointed YouTube emoticons announcing that it was blocked.

Italy’s labor market has definitely seen better days, with unemployment rising sharply during the euro zone financial crisis and showing few signs of coming back down any time soon. Once consistently below the EU average, Italy’s jobless rate is now among the highest on the continent:

Borsalino, the legendary Italian hat maker that has been covering the heads of Hollywood stars and the world’s rich and famous is in financial trouble—and may be close to bankruptcy. According to Italian business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore (link in Italian), the company’s CEO Marco Moccia says:

India’s Daughter, Leslee Udwin’s documentary on the brutal gang-rape of Jyoti Singh in 2012, was aired tonight in the UK on BBC Four.

A middle age, Midwestern man with high-school diploma, low income and a tendency not to think his vote matters much: this is the identity of the average American anti-vaxxer, according to a survey run by real-time consumer insight firm CivicScience. The report assessed participants’ perception of general vaccine safety, safety of childhood vaccines (measles, mumps, rubella) compared to other vaccines (tetanus, flu, shingles), and whether they would allow healthy unvaccinated kids to attend school regularly.

As many as 28 countries are at risk of for the next Ebola epidemic according to a new report published by Save the Children. Somalia, Chad, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Haiti, Ethiopia, Central Africa Republic, Guinea, Niger and 17 other countries lacking in health infrastructure could all be part of the “next Ebola Zone.”

Peanut allergies are on the rise in the US—they have more than doubled since 1997, affecting at least 2% of the US population (the latest available data is from 2010).

If you don’t believe in vaccinations, then your doctor might not accept your child as a patient.

Only a few months after thousands of walruses found refuge from the ice-less ocean on the Alaskan coast, hundreds of sea lion pups off the coast of California are stranded through central and southern California’s shores—in Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties—for essentially the same reason: The ocean is too warm.

Italy’s navy, the Marina Militare, is the country’s favorite military body. It wears a glamorous uniform (check out the capes), befitting the romance of a life at sea, protecting a country that dips its leg (boot and all) into the Mediterranean.