2021
July
20
Tuesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

July 20, 2021
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If you’re going to strap yourself into a 60-foot-tall rocket in West Texas, you’d probably want the experience, verve, and exuberance that Mary Wallace “Wally” Funk brings. 

On Tuesday morning, Ms. Funk joined Amazon’s Jeff Bezos; his brother, Mark; and Dutch teenager Oliver Daemen on their Blue Origin journey to the edge of space. In doing so, the 82-year-old pilot became the oldest person ever to fly above the Kármán line, the boundary of space. But that’s not really too surprising. Ms. Funk has had a lifetime of firsts:

  • At age 20, she became the first female flight instructor at a U.S. military base.
  • In 1971, she became the first female Federal Aviation Administration inspector. 
  • In 1974, she was the first female air safety investigator at the National Transportation Safety Board. 
  • But what probably put her on Mr. Bezos’ radar was her participation in the Mercury 13. In 1961, as NASA prepared seven American male astronauts for the new frontier of space, a secret, privately funded group of female pilots underwent – and passed – the same NASA tests. 

    None of the 13 women were given the opportunity to touch the hem of space – until today. “They’d say, ‘Wally, you’re a girl, you can’t do that!’ Guess what? You can still do it if you want to do it. And I like to do things that nobody has ever done,” said Ms. Funk recently.

    And so she has, once again. “I loved it!” she exclaimed afterward.


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    Today’s stories

    And why we wrote them

    Courtesy of Josseline Tomsin
    Ysabelle Adolphe and Frédéric Seron dit Clarke take a break after helping clean up a flood-damaged house in Liège, Belgium, July 18, 2021.

    As often happens after a flood, there comes a deluge of generosity. We look at that outpouring of community support in Germany and Belgium after catastrophic storms.

    Vyacheslav Kiselev/AP/File
    Gen. Boris Gromov (left), with his son Maxim, walk across the Friendship Bridge between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan as Soviet troops finish their withdrawal from Afghanistan on Feb. 15, 1989.

    As U.S. troops exit Afghanistan, it reminds Russians of the regional turmoil after their own exodus three decades ago. Our reporter looks at why the past may not be a prologue.

    The Explainer

    A new police chief can be a key element of improving community safety. But our reporter found many cities are swapping leaders too often, and that can undermine progress.

    SOURCE:

    Seattle Times; Seattle Police Department; City of Milwaukee; Miami Police Veterans Association (via Local10.com); Miami Herald; Wikipedia; Houston Chronicle; Waterloo Police Department; Northeastern University; reneehall.org; Fred Rainguet and Mary Dodge, “The Problems of Police Chiefs: An Examination of the Issues in Tenure and Turnover.” Police Quarterly, Vol. 4 No. 3. September 2001; Photos: AP

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    Henry Gass and Jacob Turcotte/Staff
    Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor
    Audye Voltaire, who moved to New York from Haiti five years ago and has never tried to ride a bike before, ends his bike-riding class by completing several circles around a basketball court on June 8, 2021, in New York.

    Our reporter shares a story about community, and a trend of overcoming the fear and embarrassment of an activity often conquered by children.


    The Monitor's View

    Reuters
    Moldova's President Maia Sandu speaks after voting in the July 11 parliamentary elections.

    When politician Maia Sandu is on the campaign trail in her small country of Moldova, her favorite word is “honest.” She uses it to describe “the majority” of her fellow citizens more than herself. “Honest people can be promoted only by citizens,” she says. It helped her last year in being elected president and again on July 11 when her party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections. The Harvard-trained former World Bank economist is, according to one political analyst, the first person in Moldova to come to power “preserving a reputation for honesty.”

    While she says honesty in public officials is key to curbing corruption, Ms. Sandu also emphasizes it as a way out of Moldova’s geopolitical muddle. As in many former Soviet republics, Moldova’s 2.6 million people remain divided in their leanings between Russia and the West – three decades after independence. A fifth of the people speak Russian as a first language and are influenced by Russian TV. She, like similar reformers in Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, and Belarus, understands that the best escape from that tired debate lies in creating an honest and transparent democratic state with independent courts that simply serve the people.

    Her own honesty has now helped put her Action and Solidarity Party into power. Ms. Sandu and the party hope to fix one of Europe’s most corrupt and poorest countries, one sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine. In June, the European Union promised €600 million ($707 million) in aid if reforms are implemented. For now, Russia has lost many of its political allies in Moldova although it has 1,500 troops in the country’s breakaway Transnistria region. President Vladimir Putin could heat up that “frozen conflict” to cause trouble.

    Ms. Sandu, the country’s first female head of state, is in a race to clean up government, especially in preventing bribery. As education minister between 2012 and 2015, she achieved some success in preventing cheating in baccalaureate examinations by placing cameras in exam rooms. By one estimate, bribery in education was halved.

    Her party’s website says the current system of governance “does not reward the honest.” But Ms. Sandu promises to “appoint an honest prime minister, honest judges and honest people to all government bodies.” It’s a word she keeps repeating. Perhaps because, in its appeal to people’s desire for truth and trust, it can have real power.


    A Christian Science Perspective

    About this feature

    To the extent that each of us strives to practice integrity, our communities and world benefit – and everyone is capable of doing this. In this article written some years ago but still relevant today, a man shares life-changing lessons he learned following his pivotal role in the 1972 Watergate scandal.


    A message of love

    Zik Maulana/AP
    Indonesian Muslims perform Eid al-Adha prayers at a mosque in Lhokseumawe, Aceh province, Indonesia, on July 20, 2021. Muslims around the world are celebrating Eid al-Adha for the second time during the pandemic.
    ( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

    A look ahead

    Thanks for joining us. Come back tomorrow for our next installment of the “Stronger” podcast: how a Nevada high school teacher coped with and conquered the pandemic challenges. 

    More issues

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