Global Headlines Express | Curiosity Finds Organic Matter on Mars; Rolling Stone Says the "Cake Case" Ruling Settles Little

Global Headlines is QDaily's new column for 2018, still in trial run. As always, it aims to help you understand more of what's going on.

What the Agenda-Setters Are Talking About

Rolling Stone: The Rulings Change Little — Comrades Still Have Work to Do

On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court handed down rulings in a same-sex wedding cake case and an abortion case. The news went straight to the front pages, but Rolling Stone's website argued that the two rulings matter far less than the headlines suggest.

Start with the cake case, seen as one of the biggest the Court took up this year. A Colorado baker refused, citing his religious beliefs, to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. The couple complained to the state Civil Rights Commission and won. Both sides fought all the way to the Supreme Court, and many people thought the case turned on how to weigh religious freedom against protection from discrimination.

The Court sided with the baker 7-2, but it never said how that tension should be resolved. Its reasoning pointed instead to procedure: the baker had not been treated fairly at the Civil Rights Commission hearing, where participants likened his religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust — an anti-religious bias that skewed the whole hearing and so violated his religious freedom.

The outcome wasn't substantive either. It threw the underlying question back to the lower courts to think through again. The justices admitted that as more such cases pour into those courts, public feeling will be stirred up, but they hoped people could argue it out as amicably as characters in a sitcom.

The abortion case produced no substantive result either. Its subject was an unmarried woman held in immigration detention whose request for an abortion the government refused, for fear that allowing it would look like the government helping her end a pregnancy. The D.C. Court of Appeals had already ruled that she had the right to terminate, and she had the abortion right after that ruling — yet the government pressed on to the Supreme Court anyway.

The Supreme Court's ruling looked like a win for the woman, but the reason it gave was that the suit had become moot, not that it was reaffirming a woman's right to end a pregnancy. So the Court did not turn the case into a strong precedent, an abortion-rights principle that could be cited again and again. No wonder some people think the ruling actually did the Trump administration a favor.

Rolling Stone's conclusion: on two bitterly divisive cases, the Court settled almost nothing. But that is how the Court works. Sometimes it has the final word — legalizing same-sex marriage, striking down anti-abortion laws; other times its role is very small. This time it was the latter. Don't let clickbait headlines fool you.

The 24-Hour News Makers

NASA confirmed on Thursday that the Mars rover Curiosity has found organic matter on the surface of Mars.

The three newly found organic molecules came from a fine-grained sedimentary rock that formed 3.5 billion years ago. Curiosity drilled just 5 centimeters down to reach them. The site is Gale Crater, where the rover landed in August 2012 to begin a science mission that includes hunting for traces of life on Mars.

According to a Reuters report, Gale Crater was once a huge lake. Mars back then was warmer and wetter than the barren planet it is now.

Organic compounds are generally taken to be the building blocks of life. But NASA's scientists still cannot say that this organic matter has anything to do with life on Mars. The astrobiologist Jennifer Eigenbrode said it could have come from three places: "First, from life we don't yet know about. Second, from meteorites. Third, it could also have been produced by geological processes — that is, by the process of rock formation."

Besides the direct evidence in the sedimentary rock, the seasonal swings Curiosity detected in Mars's atmospheric methane have also set people thinking about life.

The data show that methane in the lower atmosphere of Mars's northern hemisphere reached 2.7 times its seasonal low by late summer. According to a report in The Guardian, NASA atmospheric scientist Christopher Webster guessed that the methane may come from hydrates under the Martian surface. The gas seeps out continuously, and the seepage speeds up as summer temperatures rise.

Webster said he could not rule out that the cycle in Mars's atmospheric methane has something to do with microbial activity. Reuters reported that about 95% of the methane in Earth's atmosphere comes from biological activity, but it is far too early to say how the methane on Mars forms.

Both findings were published in the journal Science. Reuters said scientists hope Curiosity can find better-preserved organic compounds, which would help them trace the chemical marks life leaves behind.

What Else Happened in the World

French President Emmanuel Macron called on the other G7 members at the summit to respond together to Trump's trade policy, warning that the United States may be drifting further toward isolation and hegemony.

U.S. President Donald Trump said that if next week's talks with Kim Jong-un in Singapore go well, he might invite Kim to the White House. He also said Kim's reply letter to him was "very nice," though its content was "limited to saying he looks forward to meeting me."

The UK Supreme Court ruled on Northern Ireland's abortion law, finding that it violates human rights, but threw out the challenge to the law on technical grounds.

Inés Zorreguieta, the 33-year-old younger sister of the Dutch queen, died at her home in Buenos Aires; Argentine and Dutch media reported the cause of death as suicide.

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating how the merger of telecom giants T-Mobile and Sprint might affect smaller wireless carriers. The deal T-Mobile has proposed is worth $26 billion; both companies are major players in U.S. telecommunications.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani announced an unconditional ceasefire with the Taliban for the first time, running until June 20. He had pushed for a ceasefire with the Taliban many times before, but this is the first unconditional one he has offered since the 2014 election. Fighting against other armed groups, such as the Islamic State, is unaffected.

Someone Said

"This is not a place for Nazis to bathe!"

The man who shouted this was a thief. He had just stolen the clothes of Alexander Gauland, co-leader of the right-wing party Alternative for Germany, at a lake outside Berlin.

With his clothes gone, Gauland ended up walking the streets half-naked, escorted by police. The photo spread fast on social media and was shared thousands of times. Local police have not found the thief and say they have not ruled out a "political motive" behind the theft.

Gauland is a divisive man, and the Alternative for Germany party he leads is a divisive party. He thinks Germany should stop apologizing for the Second World War, and that Germans should take pride in their soldiers' wartime feats, as the British and the French do. On Muslim immigration he takes a hard line. Of the organized genocide of the war years, his verdict was that it is only "a speck of bird shit on a thousand years of glorious German history."

Outrageous as its leader's remarks are, Alternative for Germany has been rising in recent years and is now Germany's third-largest party. Its rise has come with a fresh surge of nationalism in Germany, and those outrageous lines work more like a steady dose of stimulant for the party's hard-core supporters.

Things You Might Also Be Interested In

A Canadian man died in a 24-hour coffee shop in Vancouver, and people are asking about the sky-high housing prices that left him homeless.

No one knows "Ted's" real name or his real age. This homeless man, who looked to be in his seventies, drew a steady income, but between cancer and housing prices he chose to spend his nights at Tim Hortons, Canada's signature coffee chain. For the past ten years he ate and slept near the restroom. Last week he collapsed at "his" table, and it was hours before staff noticed anything was wrong. All that time people came and went, drinking their coffee as usual, and no one paid attention to his last moments.

In Vancouver the average price of a detached house has climbed to about 1.8 million Canadian dollars. Meanwhile the homeless population has hit a record high, growing by an average of five people a week. The city set up a shelter in its east side to help drug users. But Ted had never touched drugs and rarely drank, so he passed on that option. Advocates say Ted worked low-paid jobs all his life, scraping by against limited government spending and rising prices, until he had no roof over his head at all.

Spain's new prime minister has put together his cabinet — most of them are women.

Last week Pedro Sánchez replaced Mariano Rajoy, who was mired in a corruption scandal, as Spain's prime minister. Sánchez, of the Socialist Party, quickly picked a set of senior ministers from within his party: Carmen Calvo as deputy prime minister, Nadia Calviño as economy minister, Dolores Delgado as justice minister. What they have in common: they are all women.

"[The new cabinet] is gender-balanced, spans every age group, is open to the world and rooted in the EU," Sánchez said.

The cabinet may look open, but being as open in pushing policy through will be harder. His Socialist Party holds only 84 of the 350 seats in parliament, which means his cabinet cannot count on firm support there. Even so, his first priority is repairing relations with Catalonia and keeping Spain together.

A new finding in biology can help you understand how "happy water for couch potatoes" works.

Last week researchers at Columbia University published a paper in Nature. They used light to switch on different regions of the amygdala in mice, then watched how the mice reacted while drinking water. When the region tied to sweetness was switched on, the mice drank more often; when the region tied to bitterness was switched on, they drank noticeably less and looked unhappy.

The paper could reshape how we understand the link between the taste system and emotional experience. People usually assume that recognizing food and enjoying the taste of it are tightly bound together; this paper says the two can be pulled apart and stimulated or manipulated separately. That offers a new approach to eating disorders — picture someone who knows the health risks and is still hooked on chocolate cake: take away the pleasure of eating chocolate for a while and he would probably stop.

On This Day in History

June 8, 632: Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, died of illness.

June 8, 1809: The political thinker and revolutionary Thomas Paine died.

June 8, 1949: George Orwell's novel 1984 was published.

June 8, 1957: The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued the "Directive on Organizing Forces to Prepare to Repel the Attacks of the Rightists"; the same day, People's Daily ran an editorial titled "Why Is This?" — the start of the Anti-Rightist Campaign.

June 8, 1958: The Great Leap Forward produced its first "sputnik" grain-yield story, as People's Daily reported that the Sputnik Agricultural Cooperative in Suiping County, Henan, had averaged 2,105 jin of wheat per mu across 5 mu of land.

On This Day, Tomorrow and the Day After

June 9, 68: The Roman emperor Nero died.

June 9, 1815: Luxembourg declared independence from France.

June 9, 1934: Donald Duck made his cartoon debut.

June 9, 1938: To stop the Japanese army's advance westward, Chiang Kai-shek's government breached the Yellow River dikes at Huayuankou in Henan, changing the river's course and causing heavy loss of life.

June 10, 323 BC: Alexander the Great died.

June 10, 223: Liu Bei died.

June 10, 1940: Italy declared war on France and Britain.

June 10, 1963: U.S. President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963, meant to end pay inequality based on sex.

Cover image from the film The Martian, via Douban