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IMPORTANT
| | | Beijing Exposed | Massive Leak of ‘Xinjiang Police Files’ Reveals Treatment of UyghursA stash of confidential documents, including “transcripts where leaders freely talk about what they really think,” spreadsheets and photographs of thousands of Uyghurs (some flanked by armed guards) taken to reeducation camps between January and July 2018, have been leaked to Dr Adrian Zenz, a scholar at the U.S.-based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. “The material is unredacted, it’s raw, it’s unmitigated, it’s diverse,” he told the BBC. “It’s completely unprecedented and it blows apart the Chinese propaganda veneer.” China has claimed Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities report voluntarily to the “schools that help people free themselves from extremism.” (Source: BBC; Photo source: Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation) |
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| | I’m Outta Here! | Russian Diplomat Resigns Over Putin’s ‘Aggressive War’ “For 20 years of my diplomatic career I have seen different turns of our foreign policy but never have I been so ashamed of my country as on Feb. 24 of this year,” wrote Boris Bondarev, a Russian diplomat at the U.N. mission in Geneva, in an email to colleagues announcing his resignation. The midlevel diplomat becomes the highest-ranking Russian official to publicly denounce his government. Others, including President Vladimir Putin’s climate envoy Anatoly Chubais, are understood to have resigned quietly since the war began. “I simply cannot any longer share in this bloody, witless and absolutely needless ignominy,” Bondarev wrote. (Source: NYT) |
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| | Quad Squad | Biden Puts Modi Under Pressure at Second Quad Summit U.S. President Joe Biden told leaders of Australia, India and Japan at the four-country Indo-Pacific summit known as the Quad that they were dealing with “a dark hour in our shared history.” While he didn’t mention names, his assertion that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “is more than just a European issue. It’s a global issue,” was seen as a veiled criticism of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who — sitting just a few feet away — has so far not imposed sanctions on Moscow or even condemned the Kremlin for its actions. Modi made no mention of the war in his comments. (Source: AP) |
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| | Reporting for Duty | Will American-Made M777 Howitzers Swing the War Ukraine’s Way? Three months since Russia invaded Ukraine, the most lethal weapons yet provided by the West are in action. Ukrainian forces hope that the M777 Howitzer — which shoots farther, moves faster and is easier to conceal than other howitzers — will allow them to achieve artillery superiority in some frontline areas in the Donbas region. But military experts urge caution. They say the full effect of the M777s won’t be felt for at least two weeks, when more Ukrainian troops have been trained to use the howitzers. So far, only 12 of the 90 guns donated by the U.S. are in use. (Source: NYT) |
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| | Briefly | Here are some things you should know about today: ‘If you fall asleep, it’s okay.’ There was room for some humor at the Quad summit, with President Biden giving Australia’s new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese permission to nod off after flying straight to the summit on the day of his inauguration. (Source: Sky News) Grisly find. Police in Nigeria have found the severed head of Okechukwu Okoye, a state legislator who disappeared last week in the politically volatile southeastern state of Anambra. (Source: Al Jazeera) ‘Absolutely brutal.’ British eco-campaigner Oly Rush has raised thousands of pounds for charity by becoming the first person to swim nonstop around the Caribbean island of Grand Cayman. (Source: BBC) |
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INTRIGUING
| | Home Truths | Can Home Testing Stop the Resurgence of Syphilis? The U.S. experienced a 52% increase in syphilis cases between 2016 and 2020, and pandemic-era restrictions on visits to sexual-health clinics mean the true increase is probably higher. Inspired by the success of home testing for COVID-19, experts hope that DIY syphilis tests can help stem the tide. Testing at home has many advantages — it’s anonymous, private and stigma-free — but it can also be pricey, and the onus is on patients to report their status and do their own contact tracing. Still, society is better off with at-home tests than without them, said Jen Hecht of Springboard HealthLab in California. (Source: Nature) |
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| | | Silver Lining | London’s Newest Train Line Creates Vast Bird Sanctuary Four years overdue and $5 billion over budget, the 73-mile, high-speed Victoria Line connecting the western and eastern extremities of London will transform the lives of British commuters when it opens this week. But they aren’t the only beneficiaries of the project. About 3.5 million tons of earth dug up during its construction were used by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds to construct a 400-acre network of saline mudflats, lagoons, marshes, fish pools and grasslands that’s already home to tens of thousands of migratory birds — including 150 breeding pairs of the once-endangered avocet. (Source: The Guardian) |
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| | Home at Last | After Odyssean Adventure, Ancient Gold Ring Returns to Greece Better late than never. Almost eight decades after being stolen from a museum on Rhodes, a 3,000-year-old gold signet ring has been returned to its rightful home. The Mycenaean-era ring was acquired by Georg von Békésy, a Hungarian biophysicist and art collector living in the U.S., in the 1950s or 60s. Von Békésy, who won the 1961 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, bequeathed his collection to the Nobel Foundation at his death. They tried to return the ring in 1975 but, “for reasons that are not clear from existing archives,” Greece took 47 years to take them up on it. (Sources: AP, Greek Reporter) |
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| | Gosh, Josh! | ‘Josh Fight’ Returns to Lincoln, NebraskaThe battle was fierce but in the end … Josh won. A couple of hundred people brandishing pool noodles descended on Lincoln for the second annual Josh Fight. What started with a tweet by Josh Swain of Tucson, Arizona, morphed into a real-life battle over the right to call oneself Josh in April of last year. The 2022 edition was won by defending champion five-year-old Josh Vinson Jr. and raised nearly $21,000 for Children’s Hospital & Medical Center in Omaha, which plans to share some of the donation with Josh the Otter. “The enthusiasm from everybody here was just incredible,” said Swain. (Sources: AP, KOLN) |
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| | Égalité | Upsets and Easy Wins as French Open Kicks Off Four-time tennis Grand Slam champ Naomi Osaka lost 7-5, 6-4 to 20-year-old American Amanda Anisimova at Roland Garros yesterday. Last year’s winner Barbora Krejcikova also suffered a shock first-round exit, losing 1-6, 6-2, 6-3 to Diane Parry, a 19-year-old from France who’s ranked 97 in the world. Elsewhere, it was business as usual. Women’s world No. 1 Iga Swiatek breezed past Lesia Tsurenko 6-2, 6-0, and Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic also enjoyed easy first-round wins. “I know the streak will someday stop but I'm just focusing on my game and not the numbers," said Swiatek, who’s won 42 of her last 43 sets. (Sources: BBC, AP) |
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