A great way to start a flight (video)

 

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Honduras will build a new prison

Honduras will build a high security prison on an unpopulated island in the Caribbean Sea off the country’s eastern coast. The Swan Island project will become the Western Hemisphere’s only island prison. Honduras will use the prison to house the country’s most violent criminals.

In the past, Honduran President Xiomara Castro promised to solve  violence through reforms to the government and criminal justice systems. Now, she will create an island prison capable of holding 2,000 people. The island is over 240 kilometers off the coast.

Island prisons were common in some Latin America countries including Brazil, Chile and Colombia. However, riots, poor conditions and prison escapes led to their closing. The final island prison, which belonged to Mexico, closed in 2019.

Officials in Honduras say the new prison will help stop violence. But, critics say island prisons will not deal with the root of the problem.

Tiziano Breda is a Latin America expert at Italy’s Instituto Affari Internazionali. He said that new prisons are “…useless if you don’t have control of the other prisons you have.”

Last month in Honduras, 46 women died in a prison fight that involved guns, knives and fire. It was one of the worst incidents in the history of women’s prisons.

In answer, President Castro said she will “take drastic measures” and put an end to the criminal gangs that have terrorized Honduras for years.

José Jorge Fortín, the head of Honduras’ armed forces, said that the only way to communicate with the island prison is by satellite. This will make it difficult for gangs inside the prison to organize crime and violence.

Fortín did not say how much it will cost or how long it will take to build the prison.

The neighboring country of El Salvador has a strong position against gangs. One in every 100 people there is a prisoner.  Gang members are 30 percent of the prison population in El Salvador. Violence there is lower and citizens are increasingly in favor of the system.

“If El Salvador system is effective, why not copy it?” Honduras’ Fortín said.

His idea is supported by many Hondurans, including scientist Bill Santos who said, “Ending the crime problem for ever in Honduras will be ideal for this country.”

Others are expressing environmental concerns about the new prison plan. Scientists worry the project will damage the island’s ecosystem. Last week, the Honduran Biologists Association called the prison a “threat” to nature.

Lucky Medina, Honduras’ secretary of natural resources and the environment said “We will build the prison in unity with nature. Officials will follow environmental protection measures”.

 

 From VOA (adapted)

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Back to the office?

 

Workers in the office collaborate with virtual peers at American Express 

From curbside pickup to having groceries delivered, the COVID-19 pandemic changed many norms in American society, including what it means to be on the job.

“It's been that catalyst that transformed how we work. It's changed the acceptability of working at home,” says Timothy Golden, professor of management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. "Employee expectations and the norms for employees have been altered by this experience of mass remote work.”

In the three-plus years since the pandemic forced many to work from home, remote work has transformed from a temporary arrangement to a new way of living and working. More than one-third of Americans, 34%, worked from home at least some of the time in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. By comparison, just 24% of people teleworked in 2019, before the pandemic.

Many major companies such as Amazon, Apple, Meta [Facebook] and Disney have called workers back into the office for at least part of the week. In October 2022, bank and financial holding company Goldman Sachs said that more than two-thirds of its staff were back in the office full-time.

Organizational psychologist Cathleen Swody says her corporate clients are mostly settling on a hybrid schedule where workers are in the office about three days a week.

“I am hearing a lot of pushback from employees against the mandatory full-time, back-to-work option,” says Swody, a managing partner at Thrive Leadership. “They feel that they've been working from home for three years. They've been demonstrating their performance and that they're trustworthy, and that they can actually get their work done without being on site. And now they feel a little bit like that’s being called into question.”

Golden, who has studied the issue for more than 20 years, says remote work highlights an ever-present tension between managers and employees.

“Remote work brings to the surface a lot of these classic issues in management thought, in terms of control versus autonomy,” Golden says. “Managers have a sense that maybe, somehow, they have less control over their employees because they can't physically observe them all the time. And so, that's uncomfortable for many managers.”

McKinsey and Company, a management consulting firm, surveyed 25,000 Americans in the spring of 2022 and found that 58% reported having the opportunity to work from home at least one day a week, while 35% said they could work from home five days a week. Eighty-seven percent of people who have the option to work from home take advantage of the opportunity, the survey said.

“A majority of what we're talking about is some combination of one, two, three days per week working from home. It's not fully remote,” says Ryan Luby, an associate partner at McKinsey & Company. “The implication of that is that folks tend to live within a reasonable commuting radius of their offices. …You're still going to be what we think about as tethered to an urban core.”

Having the flexibility to work remotely is more valuable than money to some employees, according to Luby, which could help boost employers' bottom line.

“It looks like folks are willing to exchange wage growth for the opportunity to work flexibly,” Luby says. “And I think, in a world in which wages are increasing rapidly and employers are concerned about wage growth, I think there's an interesting opportunity … to think about granting flexibility.”

Employers might not have much of a choice. The newest entrants into the job market — recent college graduates — are beginning their careers with different expectations than previous generations.

“They have begun the world of work with the presence of remote work … and so, that's what they know. And in large ways, that's what they have come to expect,” Golden says. “And so, when they look for career opportunities and job opportunities, they look for remote work as an option. Maybe not full time, maybe as a hybrid form.”

The experts agree that there’s almost no chance of going back to the office full time for the majority of workers who were able to telework during the pandemic.

“The horse has been let out of the barn. We have experience. We have demonstrated that the technology can work, that we can be effective not being in the office full time. And we've seen a lot of perks for employees and for work-life management, flexibility for organizations,” Swody says. “I think it's going to be very hard to go back to where we were.”

Photo Credit: American Express via AP Images

From VOA

 

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The world's biggest car manufacturer (captions)

 

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Prince Williams and homelessness

Prince Williams, who is 41 years old, is leading a new campaign called Homewards. It is a five-year project that will focus on six areas of the UK, including one part of London. After the five years, William hopes to widen the project to the whole of the country.

This week he will visit the six locations. He will meet people who have experienced homelessness, as well as local and national organizations that will help him. He will also meet advocates who are spreading the word about the campaign.

Prince William said in a statement, "In a modern and progressive society, everyone should have a safe and secure home. Through Homewards, I want to make this a reality. Over the next five years, I want to give people across the UK hope that we can prevent homelessness by working together."

His commitment is influenced by his experiences with his late mother, Princess Diana.

When Prince William was 11 years old, he visited The Passage shelter with his brother, Prince Harry, and their mother. That first visit to The Passage shelter inspired his work.

There are 300,000 homeless people in the UK every night. In London, the number of "rough sleepers" increased by 20 per cent in the past year. 

Prince William also wants to change people's perception of homelessness, which can also involve situations like sofa-surfing or staying in a friend's spare room for extended periods of time.

More than 3,000 adults in the UK answered questions for an opinion survey and the conclusions are

•       85% think homelessness is a very or fairly serious problem
•       72% think homelessness has got worse in the past year
•       73% think ending homelessness is not given enough attention
•       22% have had a personal experience of homelessness, whether themselves, family or friends

Republic is a British pressure group that wants the monarchy to be replaced with an elected head of state. Graham Smith, its CEO, criticized the plans: “Homelessness is the result of government policy and lack of investment, it isn’t something that can be resolved by charity or royal patronage.”

He highlighted the prince’s three homes, adding “Homelessness is also, in part, the result of economic inequality, something represented by the super-rich royals who live in multiple palatial homes.”

In a newspaper interview the reporter asked Prince William “Are there any plans to use part of the land you inherited to build affordable housing?”

Prince William replied “There is. Absolutely. Social housing. You’ll see that when it’s ready.”

  

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Single mothers in China

At the age of 29 Gavin Ye decided that she wanted to become a mother, but not a wife. She travelled to America and Russia for in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and gave birth to two daughters. Ms Ye—also known by her Chinese name, Ye Haiyang—now has more than 7.3m followers on Douyin (Chinese TikTok). She posts videos of life with her girls, interspersing occasional advertisements for her skincare company. She dresses in menswear and sports a crew cut. “The powerful aura of a man, the gentleness of a woman, the responsibility of a father, the greatness of a mother—you have it all,” wrote one admirer on Douyin.

Ms Ye’s fans admire not only her wealth and beautiful children, but also her promotion of single parenting. An increasing number of Chinese women are pushing for more control over family-planning decisions and redefining norms. Ms Ye’s channel is one of dozens on Douyin where single mothers share tips about reproductive technology such as ivf and messages about female independence.

That may cause some discomfort in a society where traditional households are still the norm and single mothers receive unequal access to government benefits. But faced with a declining population, the state is loosening up. Since 2022, four provinces have officially begun allowing children born out of wedlock to be registered with the government. Others are also doing so. “They won’t promote it loudly because it conflicts with their social values,” says Jing, a 33-year-old who is single and living in Shanghai. She expects no trouble registering her son, who is due next month.

Jing has faced other challenges, though. A year ago she decided that she did not have enough time to find a partner and still be a young and energetic mother. “So I should just have a child first,” she decided. But single women are not allowed to use sperm banks or freeze their eggs. So Jing asked a friend, whom she does not intend to marry, to have sex. Her mother and peers have been supportive. Her conservative father took some convincing. Jing says her mother kept telling him, “Times are different. She is not accidentally pregnant. She chose this. She is a glorious mama!”

That puts Jing in the minority. Survey data suggest that most single mothers in China are either divorced or widowed. Many are working-class or poor. Messages about economic self-sufficiency resonate with them, but they acknowledge differences with some of the influencers on Douyin. A divorced single mother in Hubei tells The Economist that few of the women around her are interested in marriage—and neither is she at the moment. Working, cleaning, cooking and raising her son takes up most of her energy. “Not everyone can be a superwoman like Ye Haiyang,” she says.

From The Economist