Economist, June 28, 2014

choi

(1) A dramatic decline in suicides | Back From the Edge; The first of two articles on China’s suicide rate looks at the effect of urbanisation.
www.economist.com/news/china/216 ... t-urbanisation-back

Quote:

“The most dramatic shift has been in the figures for rural women under 35. Their suicide rate appears to have dropped by as much as 90%.

“Two intertwined social forces are driving the reduction: migration and the rise of an urban middle class. Moving to the cities to work, even if to be treated as second-class citizens when they get there, has been the salvation of many rural young women, liberating them from parental pressures, bad marriages, overbearing mothers-in-law and other stresses of poor, rural life. Migrants have also distanced themselves from the easiest form of rural suicide, swallowing pesticides, the chosen method in nearly 60% of rural cases, and often done impulsively.

choi

(3) Justice in New York | Courtly love; A paean to the oldest tribunal in the United States.
www.economist.com/news/books-and ... states-courtly-love
(book review on James D Zirin, The Mother Court; Tales of cases that mattered in America’s greatest trial court. American Bar Association, 2014)

Quote: “‘The Mother Court’ focuses on the Southern District court of New York state (SDNY), the oldest tribunal in the United States, which first convened in November 1789, a few weeks ahead of the Supreme Court. A trial court at the bottom of the federal judicial hierarchy, the SDNY has responsibility for New York City’s boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx, as well as its northern suburbs.

My comment:
(a) United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_for_the_Southern_District_of_New_York
(i) To more easily understand section 1 Jurisdiction, consult list of counties in New York
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counties_in_New_York
(ii) Section 2 of the Wiki page tells you in 1789 there was only United States District Court for the District of New York, which was subsequently divided up to create southern district and so on. The same section also says that New York District Court functioned first does not really mean a lot. I mean, the difference separating the leader and laggards might be just weeks.

(b)
(i) United States Constitution has seven articles (I to VII). The last article states in its entirety, “The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States [or two thirds], shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.”
(ii) United States Constitution (table: Created September 17, 1787; Ratified June 21, 1788)  Wikipedia
(iii) The first three articles of the Constitution establishes legislative, executive (vice president not mentioned), and judicial branches, respectively.
(iv) Section 1, Article III, United States Constitution, stipulates, "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”

Thus United States Supreme Court has its origin in the Constitution. Congress then set up lower federal court, through Judiciary Act of 1789
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judiciary_Act_of_1789
(signed into law (by the president) on Sept 24, 1789)

Quote: “This Act established a circuit court and district court in each judicial district (except in Maine and Kentucky, where the district courts exercised much of the jurisdiction of the circuit courts). The circuit courts, which comprised a district judge and (initially) two Supreme Court justices 'riding circuit,' [there were three circuits: Eastern, Middle and Southern] had original jurisdiction over serious crimes and civil cases of at least $500 involving diversity jurisdiction or the United States as plaintiff in common law and equity. The circuit courts also had appellate jurisdiction over the district courts.

(v) “In an effort to relieve the caseload burden in the Supreme Court and to handle a dramatic increase in federal filings, Congress, in the Judiciary Act of 1891, established nine courts of appeals, one for each judicial circuit [First to Ninth circuits].” Federal Judicial Center, undated.

choi

(3) Obituary | Isaac Patch; Isaac ‘Ike’ Patch, a CIA book-smuggler, civil-rights campaigner and naturalist, died on May 31st aged 101.
www.economist.com/news/obituary/ ... alist-died-may-31st

Note:
(a) “In 1949, after the coup in Czechoslovakia, he and his family had been expelled by the secret police, at a bruising 24 hours notice.”

“In the 1946 parliamentary election, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was the winner in the Czech lands, and the Democratic Party won in Slovakia. In February 1948 the Communists seized power.”  Wikipedia
(b) “Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe were, in the end, a great journalistic success, succouring millions behind the Iron Curtain from their base in Munich.”

succor
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/succor

(c) CIA translated Western books into Russian, through “the Bedford Publishing Company[,] ranged from technology to high culture. They included works that were banned in the Soviet Union for obvious reasons, such as George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm [1945].’ Others were by out-of-favour émigrés, such as Vladimir Nabokov (‘Pnin’), or simply did not fit into the Soviet cultural canon (James Joyce’s ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.’”
(i) Pnin
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pnin
(published in 1957; last name of the eponymous protagonist; by Vladimir Nabokov [who is noted for the 1955 novel Lolita [nickname for Dolores])
(A) Dolores
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolores
(Spanish for 'sorrows', is short for La Virgen María de los Dolores, Our Lady of Sorrows)
(B) Spanish English dictionary
dolor (noun masculine;  Latin dolor “pain; grief”): “pain’ grief, sorrow”
(ii) Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_the_Artist_as_a_Young_Man
(the first novel of Irish writer James Joyce; published in 1916)

(d) “All that was just his day job. In his free time, ‘big Ike’ had turned his attention to something else: the burgeoning civil-rights movement. * * * Why should the black residents in Englewood, his home district of New Jersey * * *”
(i) He is “Big Ike” thanks to his first name Isaac.
(ii) Compare Dwight D Eisenhower
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower
(D for David; 1890-1968; section 1 Early life and education: Accounts vary as to how and when the German name Eisenhauer [German: iron hewer/miner] was anglicized to Eisenhower; “All of the [seven] boys were called ‘Ike’ * * * the nickname was intended as an abbreviation of their last name")
(iii) Englewood
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Englewood
(“Englewood is a corruption of Dutch Engelse buurt, or "English neighborhood", which originally referred to Englewood, New Jersey's status as one of the few English-speaking settlements in Dutch-speaking New Netherland”)

(e) “With crowbars, chains, ropes and pulleys, he and his children woke them up, lugging 186 of them to make a colossal triangle. Next came a menhir circle, and some carefully erected cromlechs.”
(i) menhir
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menhir
(ii) cromlech
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromlech