During sleepless nights in an immigrant detention center in Texas just north of the border, Emilio Gutierrez Soto has had a lot of time to think. Shivering on a flimsy mattress under thin sheets, 54-year-old Gutierrez finds himself circling back to the same question: Was it worth it?

Was it worth writing those articles critical of the Mexican military? Was it worth having to flee Mexico after receiving threats against his life?

Many miles away, in a teeming Mexican metropolis, Julio Omar Gomez is not confined behind bars, but might as well be.

Since last spring, Gomez, 37, has been living under state protection in a cramped, anonymous apartment many miles from home. He typically only leaves for appointments with his psychologist, who is treating him for anxiety and post-traumatic stress.

Gomez, too, wonders whether his journalism was worth it. Was exposing government corruption in his home state of Baja California Sur worth the three attacks on his life? Was it worth having to send his children into hiding?

Last year, reporters and photographers turned up dead in Mexico at a rate of about one per month, making it the most dangerous country in the world for journalists after war-torn Syria. They were some of the country's most fearless investigators and sharp-tongued critics, shot down while shopping, while reclining in a hammock, while driving children to school. In January, 77-year-old opinion columnist Carlos Dominguez was waiting at a traffic light with his grandchildren when three men stabbed him 21 times.

Ontario's Kathleen Wynne Liberals have passed what critics describe as "totalitarian" Bill 89 by a vote of 63 to 23 on the last day before Queen's Park adjourns for the summer.

Pro-family advocates warn Bill 89 gives the state more power to seize children from families that oppose the LGBTQI and gender ideology agenda, and allows government agencies to effectively ban couples who disagree with that agenda from fostering or adopting children.

Bill 89, or the Supporting Children, Youth and Families Act, 2017, repeals and replaces the former Child and Family Services Act that governs child protection services, and adoption and foster care services.

It adds "gender identity" and "gender expression" as factors to be considered "in the best interests of the child."

A 2016 study released by UCLA found that women have collectively committed millions of sexual offenses against American men including rape, assault, coercion, and harassment. The pandemic of sexual violence committed by women caused the lead author of the study, Lara Stemple, to suggest that Americans rethink "long-held stereotypes about sexual victimization and gender." Stemple previously produced a 2014 study stating that sexual victimization among men is "in many circumstances similar to the prevalence found among women." Stemple's work has focused on male victims of sex crimes and has criticized female-specific approaches to studying sexual violence, which often ostracize men who have suffered abuse.

Stemple's 2016 study found that a stunning 4.5 million American men have been forced to penetrate another individual at some point in their lives, which meets the legal criteria for rape. In 79.2% of these cases, the perpetrator was a woman.

Five days after the downing of the Su-25 aircraft by jihadist rebels in Idlib, the Russian Aerospace Forces have switched to using their advanced Su-30 and Su-35 jets in Syria, a military source told Al-Masdar this afternoon.

According to the military source, due to the small number of Su-30 and Su-35 jets in Syria at the moment, the Russian Aerospace Forces have temporarily halted air operations above some parts of the Idlib Governorate.

The purpose of switching to the Su-30 and Su-35 jets is due to their ability to launch airstrikes from high altitudes, putting them out of range from the jihadist anti-aircraft missiles (MANPAD) in the Idlib and Hama governorates.

Most of the Su-30 and Su-35 jets were withdrawn from Syria after Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to the Hmaymim Military Airport in December; however, they are preparing to bring them back after the downing of the Su-25.

The United States has provided the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) operating in Syria man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) within the framework of the secret agreement, media reported.

The Al-Masdar News media outlet reported Monday citing own sources that the US had provided the MANPADS to the Kurds earlier in the month under the agreement between Washington and the YPG. According to the news outlet, the MANPADS have been delivered to the Kurds in the northwestern part of Syria near the town of Afrin.

On Saturday, the Defense Post news website published an article, in which the spokesman of the US-led coalition fighting against the Daesh terrorist group said that the coalition was engaged in training of a 30,000-strong force on the territory within Syria currently controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia to maintain security in controlled area along the Syrian border.

The reports about the new US initiative have arisen against the backdrop of a statement made by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday. According to Erdogan, the Turkish army may launch an operation in the northwestern Syrian regions of Manbij and Afrin controlled by the Kurdish militias within a week. The Turkish leader also expressed hope that Washington would back Ankara's efforts.

A Russian passenger plane has crashed after leaving Moscow's Domodedovo airport with 71 people on board.

The Saratov Airlines jet vanished minutes after take-off and crashed near the village of Argunovo, about 80km (50 miles) south-east of Moscow.

All those on board are thought to have died, officials told Russian media.

Watching the mainstream press try to interview University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson, one thing becomes exceedingly clear: they literally can't even.

While the above expression makes my inner grammar Nazi cry, it is possibly the best description of the predictable sequence of befuddled expressions, desperate strawmen, and whiffed shots fired at Peterson from a growing list of increasingly cautious media personalities.

Cathy Newman's interrogation of the professor has garnered over five million views, and if one were to judge its contents solely on the consequent collection of memes, pundit reactions, and response/splice videos, one would conclude that Dr. Peterson spent 30 minutes deriding and verbally dominating his interviewer, banging his fists on the table and shouting like right-wing cherry bomb Alex Jones - but that's not Dr. Peterson's style.

Instead, the quiet Canadian spent a half-hour discussing free speech, the gender pay gap, and Pepe the frog in such a calm and reasonable manner that even his use of the occasional swear word sounded as though someone swapped "golly gee" out of his script at the last moment.

The interview became a sort of fulcrum for the broader media narrative surrounding Peterson: articles before the interview tried to cast him as a nerdier Milo Yiannopoulos; those since have been notably cautious about casting him as anything.

People familiar with the New Testament might recall a passage from the book of Matthew that details a series of exchanges between Jesus and the Pharisees that concludes with this memorable phrase: "And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions."

Peterson, fond of incorporating biblical themes into his teaching, has almost backed the media into such a corner. In fact, the most recent interviews and articles regard him with a strange blend of cautious hostility and grudging respect.

Celebrities criticizing the #MeToo movement have been joined by another big personality from the movie industry. Oscar-winning Austrian film director Michael Haneke called it a "witch hunt" that "poisons" the social climate.

"I regard this hysteria of rash judgments that is spreading at the moment as absolutely disgusting," director and screenwriter Haneke said in an interview with the Austrian daily Kurier.

"People are just being finished off in the media, [their] lives and careers are being ruined," he said. "Any kind of rape or [sexual] coercion should be punished," he stressed, but what bothers him about the ongoing debate around allegations of sexual abuse targeting celebrities is its "totally unperceived malignance, the blind rage that is not based on facts."

Israeli settlers have attempted to abduct two Palestinian children in the village of Madma to the south of the West Bank city of Nablus, Quds Press has reported.

A member of the village council Talaat Ziyadeh said that a group of settlers descended from the illegal settlement of Yitzhar, raided the village and chased two Palestinian children yesterday.

He said that these children are shepherds and they were feeding their goats on the outskirts of the village when the settlers attempted to abduct them.

Just imagine that somebody told you that men and women are biologically different, that people ought to take responsibility for their own lives, and modern life often seems hollow and meaningless.

Imagine that this person went on to say that young men often lack a sense of initiative, too many university courses have fallen victim to trendy dogmas, and free speech sometimes means telling people what they don't want to hear.

Would you shudder in horror? Would you rush onto social media to condemn him as a dangerous lunatic? Or would you, perhaps, nod in agreement at what seemed like plain common-sense?