Good morning. We’re masking a discuss with via U.S. lawmakers to Taiwan and Salman Rushdie’s street to restoration.
More U.S. lawmakers discuss with Taiwan
A delegation of 5 U.S. lawmakers arrived in Taiwan the previous day. Their discuss with got here not up to two weeks after a contentious travel via Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, which infuriated Beijing and provoked Chinese army drills off Taiwan’s coast.
Taiwanese officers stated they preferred the U.S. display of harmony all the way through the escalating tensions with Beijing. The U.S. delegation deliberate to satisfy these days with Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s president, and seek advice from the international affairs and nationwide protection committees of Taiwan’s legislature, Taiwan stated.
China had no fast reaction, however the presence of the 5 U.S. lawmakers so quickly after Pelosi’s discuss with was once prone to elicit a pointy response and in all probability encourage extra army workout routines, analysts stated.
Context: After Pelosi’s discuss with, Beijing fired 5 missiles into waters which might be a part of Japan’s unique financial zone, a caution to Japan and to the U.S. about coming to Taiwan’s help within the tournament of a war there. Last week, China wrapped up live-fire workout routines that encircled the island and simulated a blockade. But Taiwan gave the impression undeterred, and China went simple on its economic system.
Salman Rushdie is recuperating
After Salman Rushdie was once stabbed kind of 10 occasions on Friday all the way through a speech, “the road to recovery has begun,” his agent stated the previous day. Rushdie was once taken off a ventilator and may just talk a couple of phrases.
A 24-year-old guy was once charged with tried homicide and attack with a weapon. Prosecutors stated the assault was once premeditated and focused.
Rushdie has been residing quite brazenly after years of a semi-clandestine lifestyles that adopted the newsletter of his novel “The Satanic Verses,” which fictionalized portions of the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad. In 1989, about six months after the e book got here out, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then the chief of Iran, issued an edict referred to as a fatwa that ordered Muslims to kill Rushdie.
Details: Because of the assault, the writer would possibly lose an eye fixed, has a broken liver and has severed nerves in his arm, his agent stated.
Our Coverage of the Russia-Ukraine War
Background: In 1991, the Japanese translator of “The Satanic Verses” was once fatally stabbed. The crime stays unsolved. The novel’s Italian translator, its Norwegian writer and a Turkish novelist who printed an excerpt all survived makes an attempt on their lives.
A yr of Taliban rule
A yr into Taliban rule, Afghanistan has appeared to hurtle backward in time, my colleagues write in an research. For many Afghans — in particular ladies in towns — the sense of loss has been devastating.
Two many years of U.S.-financed reforms had been reversed via mounting restrictions on day-to-day lifestyles, enforced via police-state ways like door-to-door searches and arbitrary arrests. Schools and jobs are once more limited for girls. Music has been banned, and beards are obligatory for males — an echo of the Taliban’s first rule within the Nineteen Nineties.
“Now it’s gone — all of it,” stated Zakia Zahadat, 24, who used to paintings in a central authority ministry after she earned a faculty level. She is most commonly confined to her house at the present time, she stated. “We have lost the power to choose what we want.”
International isolation is exacerbating Afghanistan’s financial and humanitarian disaster, which would possibly deepen after U.S. officers accused the Taliban of harboring the chief of Al Qaeda this month. But the rustic has been in a technique: It is in large part at peace after many years of warfare that upended the lives of rural Afghans specifically.
Background: Here are footage from the Taliban’s offensive remaining yr, with context and reflections from our Kabul bureau leader.
Profiles: A gaggle of Afghan workers from our Kabul bureau are adjusting after their evacuation to the U.S. Their new lives are difficult however stuffed with alternatives.
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Anime idealizes intimacy and romance, however has a tendency to be significantly coy in its depictions of bodily encounters.
A hug, subsequently, has thus taken on symbolic significance, Maya Phillips writes in a video-filled essay. It steadily is a special more or less consummation, particularly when characters include as they fall during the air.
The destiny of the “comfort women”
The photographer Tsukasa Yajima, identified for his stark, poignant portraits of the previous intercourse slaves for Japan’s infantrymen in World War II, has received reward for blowing the whistle on South Korea’s remedy of “comfort women.” But it has additionally come at a price.
Recently, he uncovered subpar prerequisites at South Korea’s best-known safe haven for the ones survivors, the House of Sharing, the place he runs its global outreach program. Along with South Korean workers, Yajima uncovered how donations supposed for survivors’ welfare had been enriching South Korea’s greatest and maximum tough Buddhist order, Jogye.
An investigation via a joint panel of presidency officers and civilian mavens showed many of the whistle-blowers’ accusations and extra, and it result in legal indictments. Angry donors have sued the House of Sharing.
Yajima, a Japanese nationwide, has borne the brunt of a backlash from previous and provide safe haven workers. The whistle-blowers face dozens of defamation and different complaints; 4 of them give up remaining month, complaining about harassment. But Yajima has insisted on staying on.
