Hasta La Gadget!

Can you believe it’s June already? With a new month comes a brand spanking new slate of movies and TV shows to stream on Netflix. And this month, the offering includes an eclectic mix of new and old favorites featuring black stars. 

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On a typical morning in Chiang Mai, Thailand, Marie Frederickson wakes up to the sound of temple bells marking the call for Buddhist monks to begin their daily meditation and prayer. This ritual is one of those cultural traditions that Frederickson, a Boston native who’s lived as a semi-retired expat in Thailand for the last 15 years, doesn’t take for granted.

“I fell in love with the place. The people, the food, the crafts, the landscape. Just about everything,” she said. The view of rice fields, chickens, cows and the occasional water buffalo meandering by the kitchen window of her traditional Lanna (northern Thai) style home don’t hurt either, she said.

At 73, Frederickson, a self-described “very, very active retired lady,” decided to move to Thailand after a visit with her youngest brother and his wife left her “hooked.” Today, Frederickson stays busy the way most retired people do: Reading, gardening, painting and cooking. She also volunteers with the local theater group and works as a promoter and online marketer for her housemate’s company Best Tuk Tuk Tours.

Chiang Mai, nicknamed the ‘Rose of the North,’ is widely considered the country’s cultural and spiritual heart. With no shortage of things to do, between its abundance of beautiful temples, charming riverside cafés and contingent of retired expats along with newly developed shopping malls replete with multiplexes and artisanal coffee shops, Chiang Mai has seen a steady rise in it retired expat community over the years.

“If you’re going there just to retire, Chiang Mai is a really great place to do that,” Steven LePoidevin, a Canadian expat and former Chiang Mai resident, said. “People go to Thailand, whether it’s Bangkok or the islands for a number of reasons, but Chiang Mai in particular because there are so many other expats. And the cost of living is probably one of the cheapest in the world.”

Chiang Mai was ranked by International Living as one of the top places to retire abroad in 2017, thanks to the low cost of healthcare and climate as well as overall quality of life. 

“You can live in Chiang Mai and still be living in the States basically,” Mr. LePoidevin, who lived there for three years until recently with his wife, Nancy, said. “Most people I’ve talked to say they want to move to a place where there’s a built-in community and a big number of expats already. Chiang Mai is the perfect place for that.”

While the exact number of expats is unknown, the Chiang Mai Expats Living Guide estimates that around 40,000 documented expats live Chiang Mai, a figure LePoidevin said is definitely underreported. “You’re looking at 40,000 expats and some people say there could be as many as 60,000 or even more because there are a lot of people there that are living off the grid. Of that 40,000 the biggest group there is still Americans and a lot of that is retirees,” he said. 

LePoidevin said while there’s an eclectic mix of nationalities, Australians, North Americans and the U.K., are among the highest represented areas.

The Chiang Mai Expats Club (CEC) which hosts monthly meetups such as coffee mornings, brunch outings and outside group activities, is the “glue that holds many of the retired expats together,” LePoidevin says. The fact that Thailand celebrates all of the American holidays including Christmas and New Years also make the transition much easier. 

“The longer you live in these other countries, the more you realize how screwed over North Americans are,” Mr. LePoidevin said. “I mean you can rent a really nice condo in downtown Chiang Mai for $500 or $600 dollars a month in a city of one million with five modern malls and a modern cinema across the street and great restaurants. You can’t get that anywhere in the States anywhere in the downtown area.”

For Marie Frederickson, her home in Chiang Mai is one she said she “never wants to leave.”

“After almost 15 years I still haven’t seen it all,’ Frederickson said. “I love the local people. Their smiles, legends, superstitions and sense of family and generosity. The list can go on and on.”

Michelle Gross is a Jersey City based travel, food and culture reporter. Her work has been featured in Vogue, Travel+Leisure, Food&Wine and Men’s Journal. Please follow her on Instagram and Twitter @mtothegnyc

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A new video from Save The Children is bringing attention to the alarming reality of underage pregnancy worldwide.

Released on Wednesday, the video features a young girl unboxing what she thinks is a new doll ― and finding a pregnancy test instead.

“I don’t know what this is,” the girl says, pulling out the test. “It says pregnant, not pregnant.” 

“Every two seconds, a girl around the world gives birth,” she reads off a card in the box.

“Girls can have babies?” she asks.

The girl’s reaction in the video was not staged, according to the group.

Around 16 million girls ages 15 to 19 give birth each year around the world, according to a new report from Save The Children ― while 1 million girls under age 15 do so.

That means a girl age 19 or under gives birth every two seconds.

While the rate of very young mothers (under age 15) seems to be declining worldwide, according to the report, childbirth among older teens (ages 15 to 17) has remained steady.

The report ranks 172 countries on how well they provide children with safe, secure and healthy childhoods, factoring in issues like early pregnancy, extreme violence and child labor.  

The U.S. comes in 36th ― behind Bosnia (35), Qatar (34) and Poland (26) ― and far behind leaders like Norway (1) and Germany (10).

“When a girl gets pregnant, her childhood ends,” a line in the video says.

When a girl gets pregnant, her childhood ends.
Save The Children

Teen moms disproportionately live in rural, poor areas and have low levels of education, according to the United Nations. They often end up dropping out of school and face heightened health risks. Each year, around 70,000 girls ages 10 to 19 die from pregnancy or childbirth complications.

“Going to school pregnant made me an outcast,” former teen mom Breanne, who became pregnant at 15, says in Save The Children’s report. “You have to grow up fast because you’re responsible for a little life.”

In 2015 in the U.S., around 1 in 45 girls ages 15 to 19 had a baby, according to the report. 

Although the adolescent birth rate in the United States has dropped by more than 60 percent in the past 25 years, it is still higher than that of most developed nations ― more than twice the rate of France, and five times that of Japan. 

Teen pregnancy also disproportionately affects young women of color. The vast majority of teen births ― 95 percent ― occur in developing regions, the report states, where populations are largely people of color.

And in the U.S., according to the CDC, the birth rate for Hispanic teens in 2015 was more than two times higher than for white teens; for black teens, it was almost twice as high as for white teens; and for Native teens, it was more than one and a half times higher than the white teen birth rate.

Asked why its video featured a white girl when far more young women of color are teen moms in the U.S. and around the world, Save The Children declined to comment on the record. This video is one of three the group released with its report on “Stolen Childhoods” ― the other two, on extreme violence and child labor, feature children of color.

Save The Children’s U.S. section of its report concludes by calling for Congress to fund programs that support healthy and secure childhoods, from early childhood education to maternal and infant home visits.

President Donald Trump has proposed several policies that affect girls and women’s access to reproductive health care worldwide, placing more girls at risk of early pregnancy.

Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order reinstating the global gag rule, which blocks U.S. funding to international nonprofits that provide or advise on family planning and reproductive health services if these include abortion.

Last week, Trump proposed a budget that would cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood, which provides contraceptives and other reproductive health care to women. This week, the administration is expected to roll back a federal rule that requires employers to cover birth control in health insurance plans at no cost to women, replacing it with a new rule that has alarmed civil liberties organizations and progressive advocacy groups. 

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De Blasio’s support for the pact aligns with his other efforts to battle climate change, including a goal to reduce citywide greenhouse gas emissions and a $20 billion resiliency plan ― all factors voters will get to consider when elections roll around this November.

Other state lawmakers have also expressed their support for the pact should Trump withdraw the U.S. from it.

Thirty-seven mayors representing cities around the country ― including Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Atlanta ― signed an open letter to the president in November urging him to join them in battling climate change. But they also indicated they’d be “prepared to forge ahead even in the absence of federal support.”

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti reinforced his stance with a tweet earlier this month.

While the Paris climate accord is an international treaty, smaller initiatives by individual states can still make a difference.

The national government doesn’t mandate whether a city’s bus fleet runs on natural gas or is electric, Seth Schultz, director of science and innovation for C40, a global climate and cities consortium, told Wired. “They cannot mandate sidewalk setback or a bicycle sharing system. But there are ways cities can control huge swaths of emissions from the transport sector.”

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While Microsoft’s HoloLens is the first augmented-reality headset you can actually try (if you’re a developer, anyway), it’s also pretty inaccessible thanks to its $3,000 price. Late last year, Stereolabs announced a potential solution in the form of…