As recently as 2021, the southern India state of Karnataka recorded more than 30 cases of violence against Christians and their property. As recently as 2022, its government used a legislative loophole to pass an anticonversion law.

But this month, Christians are rejoicing after a newly elected state government has announced a significant financial investment in the community and promised to repeal the anticonversion law.

“There is evident change in the approach of the government,” said Atul Aghamkar, the national director of the Evangelical Fellowship of India’s National Center for Urban Transformation, based out of Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka. “That will make a big difference.”

Read it all.

“We are looking forward to improvements in education opportunities, health care, employment, and overall advancement.”https://t.co/r2t9KK5HUU

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) July 19, 2023

The number of marriages in China declined for nine consecutive years, falling by half in less than a decade. Last year, about 6.8 million couples registered for marriage, the lowest since records began in 1986, down from 13.5 million in 2013, according to government data released last month.

Although the numbers have risen so far in 2023 compared with the year before, more marriages are ending, too. In the first quarter of this year, 40,000 more couples married compared with the same period a year earlier, while divorces rose by 127,000.

Surveys have shown that young people are deterred by the toll of putting a child through China’s cutthroat education system. As women in cities achieve new levels of financial independence and education, marriage is less of an economic necessity to them. And men say they cannot afford to get married, citing cultural pressure to own a home and a car before they can even begin dating.

The instability of the last three years has compounded these pressures, reshaping many young people’s expectations about building a family. China has imposed an increasingly tight grip over every aspect of society under its leader, Xi Jinping — with effects that could weigh on the marriage rate.

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It has been brutal for China’s young adults as their unemployment rate soars amid a wave of corporate layoffs. For many people, the recent turmoil is another reason to postpone major life decisions — contributing to a record-low marriage rate.https://t.co/eOaYk6ITgp

— NYT Business (@nytimesbusiness) July 10, 2023

The concept of “Asian values”, once championed by leaders across the region, went out of vogue after the Asian financial crisis of 1997. The idea that East and South-East Asia’s disciplined governments had a unique economic edge over the decadent West suddenly seemed less compelling. Today in prosperous East Asia a different facet of those ballyhooed values is looking even more parlous. In China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, Asians’ supposed commitment to conservative family life is collapsing. As we report in our Asia and China sections this week, millions of young people are opting for looser, often lonelier and—in the East Asian context—less male-dominated arrangements. In a region that is home to over a fifth of humanity, the socioeconomic and demographic consequences will be vast, potentially destabilising and will shape millions of lives.

In Japan, where the shift first became evident, married couples with at least one child accounted for 42% of households in 1980, and single people 20%. That has flipped. In 2020 couples with children accounted for 25% of households, and singletons 38%. And the decline is continuing. Last year 17% of Japanese men and 15% of women aged 18-34 said they would not marry, up from 2% and 4% in the early 1980s, and China recorded its lowest-ever number of marriages, half as many as a decade ago.

In some ways young Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese and South Koreans are following a path charted in rich countries elsewhere.

Read it all.

Marriage rates across the region are dwindling and fertility rates are plummeting as a result. Governments’ response to this social change is only making things worse https://t.co/KTwGOdL9Ru

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) July 6, 2023

Her grandfather had been a mystery for as long as she could remember, his name an unanswered question, a frequent Google search.

All Sandra Sharpe knew about him was what others had told her.

“Good man,” they would say. “Fine soldier,” many recalled.

The rest was crumbs and brief glimpses of his life through out-of-place facts: He was a Marine and a general. He fought in World War I and II, and died suddenly of a heart attack in India during a round-the-world trip in 1965.

For decades that was all she could really find — nothing about a gravesite or even what town.

Until one day in 2012 when she discovered she wasn’t the only one looking for him.

Read it all.

The quest to find and bring home the remains of Maj. Gen. Harry K. Picket became an odyssey. A family looking for answers would join forces with a group of Citadel graduates determined to bring back one of their own. Soon it will reach its emotional end.
https://t.co/tpWrrxtFIW

— Caitlin Byrd (@MaryCaitlinByrd) July 4, 2023

When the Chinese government abruptly abandoned its zero-covid policy at the end of 2022, all bets were on a rapid economic rebound. After nearly three years of restrictions, the world’s second-largest economy would, the thinking went, come roaring back.

In the event, China has reopened with a whimper, not a bang. A range of economic indicators, including retail sales and investment, have risen less rapidly than expected. Some analysts now think the economy might not have grown at all during the second quarter. At this rate, the government’s modest gdp target, for growth in 2023 of 5%, will only just be met.

There are several reasons to be gloomy about China’s economic prospects, from America’s export controls on advanced semiconductors and skittish foreign investors, to President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on big tech firms. But the main culprit for the recent weakness is property, which before the pandemic was a crucial source of growth across the economy. Activity slowed, first as the government sought to rein in heavily indebted developers, and then more recently as sales have stayed weak. Between January and May, for instance, real-estate investment fell by 7.2%, compared with the same period a year ago. The danger is that the property bust now becomes an enduring malaise.

Read it all.

"Even if China wanted to foster more consumption-led growth, it would not easily be able to do so. Many of the government’s economic policies are still designed to promote exports and investment, and to suppress consumption."
https://t.co/CS1xXzSMZV

— Michael Pettis (@michaelxpettis) June 22, 2023

It was the dead of winter in February 2022 when I first met Marwa, a 38-year-old opium addict, sitting huddled under a blanket in the women’s drug rehabilitation center in Kabul with two of her children. Mina, age 2, had just woken up and was writhing in pain, lifting her small head to see her new visitors.

Marwa’s other daughter, Zahra, age 15, was sitting by the edge of the bed. I first mistook her for a boy as she was dressed in boys’ clothing. Her mother said dressing as a boy made it easier for her to buy drugs. Zahra had been wearing the outfit when she was picked up by the hospital’s field team from under Pul-e-Sukhta, a bridge in western Kabul that has transformed into a gathering place for drug users and sellers.

Dr. Shaista Hakeem, director of the 150-bed National Center for the Treatment of Addiction for Women and Children in Kabul, introduced me to her patients that day, telling me the family had been at the hospital for more than a week. They were seeking treatment for opium addiction, which consisted of 15 days of medication and 15 days of counseling, awareness, and skill training. It was an ordeal, especially for the children, who suffered withdrawal symptoms despite regular doses of medication. The effectiveness of treatment varies from patient to patient, Hakeem added.

Marwa had been taking opium and heroin, a more refined opioid, for 10 years, and had passed on her addiction to her youngest child, Mina, through breast milk.

Read it all.

'The % of women reporting drug addiction rose to 9.5% in 2015 from 3% in 2009. Furthermore, 9.2% of children up to 14 years old tested positive for drugs and were likely to be engaged in active drug use' '#Afghanistan's #opium tragedy' https://t.co/fvRJYb7pAX via @NikkeiAsia

— Kenneth Maxwell (@Kenny_Maxwell) June 21, 2023

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said ties between New Delhi and Washington are stronger and deeper than ever as India moves to secure what he sees as its rightful place on the world stage at a moment of geopolitical turmoil.

“There is an unprecedented trust” between the leaders of the U.S. and India, Modi said in an interview ahead of his first official state visit to Washington after nine years in office. He hailed growing defense cooperation between the two countries as “an important pillar of our partnership,” which he said extends to trade, technology and energy.

In Washington this week, Modi is expected to complete deals to manufacture jet-fighter engines in India to power advanced light combat aircraft, and to purchase high-altitude armed Predator drones from the U.S. in a multibillion-dollar agreement to boost surveillance efforts over the Indian Ocean and near its disputed border with China in the Himalayas.

Read it all.

It's been a very long time since Modi did an interview with a Western media outlet. In WSJ, he hits on some of the key themes of India's foreign policy during his term-especially India as a leader of the global South and taking on a greater global role.https://t.co/8gnS2ZC2bF

— Michael Kugelman (@MichaelKugelman) June 20, 2023

Before the border closure, Myong Suk would arrange for much-needed drugs, including antibiotics, to be smuggled across from China, which she would sell at her local market. She needed to bribe the border guards, which ate up more than half of her profits, but she accepted this as part of the game. It allowed her to live a comfortable life in her town in the north of the country, along the vast border with China.

The responsibility to provide for her family has always caused her some stress, but now it consumes her. It has become nearly impossible to get hold of products to sell.

Once, in desperation, she tried to smuggle the medicine herself, but was caught, and now she is monitored constantly. She has tried selling North Korean medicine instead, but even that is hard to find these days, meaning her earnings have halved.

Now when her husband and children wake, she prepares them a breakfast of corn. Gone are the days they could eat plain rice. Her hungry neighbours have started knocking at the door asking for food, but she has to turn them away.

“We are living on the front line of life,” she says.

Read it all.

"We are stuck, waiting to die"

The disaster unfolding inside North Korea, more than three years since its borders were sealedhttps://t.co/HoOMNsaNbj

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) June 15, 2023

Since President Xi Jinping secured a precedent-defying third term in October, the Communist Party’s top decision-making body has skipped publishing a statement for three separate months. During the Chinese leader’s second term, it took the party nearly five years to miss the same number of statements.

While there is no public mandate for the Politburo to meet monthly, it has done so for 90% of Xi’s decade-plus tenure, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of government statements.

It’s unclear whether the Politburo failed to convene in November, January and May, or if the elite group discussed sensitive matters it didn’t want to reveal. It’s still possible for state media to release statements on the body’s activities. Sometimes the party releases transcripts of Xi’s remarks months, or even years, later.

Read it all.

China’s Missing Politburo Statements Fan Fears of Data Gaps https://t.co/Er8jen72mx

— Andrew J Phelan (@ajphelo) June 7, 2023

The Taliban has further tightened restrictions on Afghan women by banning them from working for the United Nations, putting at risk the agency’s multibillion-dollar aid program in Afghanistan.

The U.N. warned Tuesday of “serious concern” after its female Afghan staff were prevented by the authorities from entering their offices in the eastern province of Nangarhar. Working for the U.N. was one of the last avenues of employment left for women in Afghanistan.

“We remind de facto authorities that United Nations entities cannot operate and deliver lifesaving assistance without female staff,” the U.N. said on Twitter.

The U.N. has repeatedly warned that excluding women from the aid sector is a “red line.” It says aid won’t be able to reach women in need without female employees, as the country’s conservative culture in the country doesn’t allow men and women to mix.

Read it all.

The Taliban has banned Afghan women from working for the United Nations, putting at risk the agency’s multibillion-dollar aid program in Afghanistan https://t.co/6qYZLONJ8G

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) April 4, 2023

The Anglican Church of Uganda and clergy from Oryun Community Church in South Korea have launched a training centre for missionaries in Uganda.

The Daniel Missional Leadership Training Centre at Lweza in Wakiso District, Central Uganda, was commissioned last week at a colourful event graced by top Anglican Church leaders in Uganda and Oryun Community Church.

Speaking at the event on 21st March, the Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Uganda, Dr Stephen Kaziimba Mugalu, said the centre will train young leaders to usher God’s Kingdom into their homes, churches, universities, workplaces and the rest of the world.

“The commissioning of the centre is a clear testimony that the Anglican Church of Uganda shall be celebrated for sending missionaries to the world,” Kaziimba said, adding, “We envision many young people being equipped for the works of the ministry and sent to the world to light it.”

Read it all.

Anglican Church in Uganda and South Koreans launch new missionary training centrehttps://t.co/su7AlpDC3t pic.twitter.com/7Ni5LR8aez

— Anglican Ink (@anglicanink) April 3, 2023

As part of his job as fraud detector at biomedical publisher Spandidos, John Chesebro trawls through research papers, scrutinising near identical images of cells. For him, the tricks used by “paper mills” — the outfits paid to fabricate scientific studies — have become wearily familiar.

They range from clear duplication — the same images of cell cultures on microscope slides copied across numerous, unrelated studies — to more subtle tinkering. Sometimes an image is rotated “to try to trick you to think it’s different”, Chesebro says. “At times you can detect where parts of an image were digitally manipulated to add or remove cells or other features to make the data look like the results you are expecting in the hypothesis.” He estimates he rejects 5 to 10 per cent of papers because of fraudulent data or ethical issues.

Spandidos, based in Athens and London, accepts a large volume of papers from China, with around 90 per cent of its output coming from Chinese authors. In the mid-2010s, independent scientists accused Spandidos of publishing papers with results that recycled the same sets of data. As part of its response to the allegations, the publisher is using a team of in-house fraud detectors to weed out and retract fake research.

Over the past two decades, Chinese researchers have become some of the world’s most prolific publishers of scientific papers. The Institute for Scientific Information, a US-based research analysis organisation, calculated that China produced 3.7mn papers in 2021 — 23 per cent of global output — and just behind the 4.4mn total from the US.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

China’s fake science industry: how ‘paper mills’ threaten progress https://t.co/ajIYXluYA9

— FT China (@ftchina) March 28, 2023

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, flew into Moscow this week cast by Beijing as its emissary for peace in Ukraine. His summit with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, however, demonstrated that his priority remains shoring up ties with Moscow to gird against what he sees as a long campaign by the United States to hobble China’s ascent.

Talk of Ukraine was overshadowed by Mr. Xi’s vow of ironclad solidarity with Russia as a political, diplomatic, economic and military partner: two superpowers aligned in countering American dominance and a Western-led world order. The summit showed Mr. Xi’s intention to entrench Beijing’s tilt toward Moscow against what he recently called an effort by the United States at the full-fledged “containment” of China.

Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin used the pomp of the three-day state visit that ended on Wednesday to signal to their publics and to Western capitals that the bond between their two countries remained robust and, in their eyes, indispensable, 13 months after Mr. Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine. They laid out their vision for the world in a nine-point joint statement that covered everything from Taiwan to climate change and relations with Mongolia, often depicting the United States as the obstacle to a better, fairer world.

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When Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin issued a joint statement last year, they had said their countries had a “limitless friendship.” This time, they sought to draw clearer boundaries, declaring that they are not in a traditional political and military alliance. https://t.co/eaNVkt4CCk

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) March 22, 2023

The speed of the change is astonishing. Since entering America in 2017, TikTok has picked up more users than all but a handful of social-media apps, which have been around more than twice as long (see chart 1). Among young audiences, it crushes the competition. Americans aged 18-24 spend an hour a day on TikTok, twice as long as they spend on Instagram and Snapchat and more than five times as long as they spend on Facebook, which these days is mainly a medium for communicating with the grandparents (see chart 2).

TikTok’s success has prompted its rivals to reinvent themselves. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has turned both apps’ main feeds into algorithmically sorted “discovery engines” and launched Reels, a TikTok clone bolted onto Facebook and Instagram. Similar lookalike products have been created by YouTube (Shorts), Snapchat (Spotlight), Pinterest (Watch) and even Netflix (Fast Laughs). The latest TikTok-inspired makeover, announced on March 8th, was by Spotify, a music app whose homepage now features video clips that can be skipped by swiping up. (TikTok’s Chinese sister app, Douyin, is having a similar effect in its home market, where digital giants like Tencent are increasingly putting short videos at the centre of their offerings.)

Read it all.

Short-form video has taken over social media. Although users have a seemingly endless appetite for the format, it is proving less profitable for platforms than the old news feed https://t.co/3uUiiiW4VL

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) March 21, 2023

Xi Jinping has pledged to strengthen China’s security and build the military into a “great wall of steel” to defend the country’s interests as relations with the west reach the lowest point in decades.

The Chinese president’s speech on Monday to the nearly 3,000 delegates of the National People’s Congress came at the close of the country’s annual rubber-stamp parliamentary session, during which Xi secured an unprecedented third term as president and appointed a close ally as his number two.

After thanking delegates for his unanimous re-election last week, Xi said he would “build the military into a great wall of steel that effectively safeguards national sovereignty, security and our development interests”.

He also pledged to better marry “development and security”, stating that “safety is the foundation of development, and stability is the prerequisite for prosperity”.

Read it all.

Xi Jinping pledged to build China's military into a 'great wall of steel' to defend the country’s interests, including Taiwan https://t.co/3bFpc3200Y

— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) March 13, 2023

In the contest of the century—the U.S. rivalry with China—the deciding factor will be innovation power. Technological advances in the next five to ten years will determine which country gains the upper hand in this world-shaping competition. The challenge for the United States, however, is that government officials are incentivized to avoid risk and focus on the short term, leaving the country to chronically underinvest in the technologies of the future.

If necessity is the mother of invention, war is the midwife of innovation. Speaking to Ukrainians on a visit to Kyiv in the fall of 2022, I heard from many that the first months of the war were the most productive of their lives. The United States’ last truly global war—World War II—led to the widespread adoption of penicillin, a revolution in nuclear technology, and a breakthrough in computer science. Now, the United States must innovate in peacetime, faster than ever before. By failing to do so, it is eroding its ability to deter—and, if necessary, to fight and win—the next war.

The alternative could be disastrous. Hypersonic missiles could leave the United States defenseless, and cyberattacks could cripple the country’s electric grid. Perhaps even more important, the warfare of the future will target individuals in completely new ways: authoritarian states such as China and Russia may be able to collect individual data on Americans’ shopping habits, location, and even DNA profiles, allowing for tailor-made disinformation campaigns and even targeted biological attacks and assassinations. To avert these horrors, the United States needs to make sure it remains ahead of its technological competitors.

The principles that have defined life in the United States—freedom, capitalism, individual effort—were the right ones for the past and remain so for the future. These basic values lie at the foundation of an innovation ecosystem that is still the envy of the world. They have enabled breakthroughs that have transformed everyday life around the world. The United States started the innovation race in pole position, but it cannot rest assured it will remain there. Silicon Valley’s old mantra holds true not just in industry but also in geopolitics: innovate or die.

Read it all (registration).

Eric Schmidt: Why Technology Will Define the Future of Geopolitics https://t.co/LP2imSEoSu

— Albert Royo (@AlbertRoyo5) February 28, 2023

Chinese researchers lead their American counterparts in the study of dozens of critical technologies, according to a new report that proposes Beijing is dominant in some scientific pursuits and positioned to develop key future breakthroughs.

The report, published Thursday by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, puts Chinese researchers ahead of Americans in 37 of 44 technologies examined, across the sectors of defense, space, robotics, energy, environment, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, advanced materials and quantum technology.

“In the long term, China’s leading research position means that it has set itself up to excel not just in current technological development in almost all sectors, but in future technologies that don’t yet exist,” ASPI concludes. No other nation is close to China and the U.S. in the research race, according to the Canberra-based think tank, which is primarily funded by Australia’s government. The report put India and the U.K. distantly behind them in most sectors, followed by South Korea and Germany.

The report says China’s research interest and performance in military and space sectors are particularly notable….

Read it all.

Beijing is globally dominant in some scientific pursuits and positioned to develop key future breakthroughs, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute says https://t.co/3SjLk37lu2

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) March 2, 2023

Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, is preparing to use the upcoming rubber-stamp parliamentary session to launch a “forceful” overhaul of the government by appointing his most trusted acolytes to oversee the financial, technology and other sectors.

The annual National People’s Congress, which kicks off on Sunday, will replace Premier Li Keqiang, the head of government, and his team of technocrats that has been credited with steering the economy through the turmoil of the past five years. Important portfolios such as the financial sector may also be restructured.

Xi pledged at a meeting on Tuesday that the party was planning “far-reaching” changes which, aside from financial sector reform, would include exerting closer control over the technology and science sectors and — perhaps most ominously for business — increased party involvement in “non-public enterprises”.

The changes come at a sensitive moment for China’s economy, which was hamstrung by Xi’s draconian zero-Covid strategy last year and regulatory crackdowns on the tech and property sectors that have damaged business sentiment. Gross domestic product in 2022 grew just 3 per cent, well below the official target of 5.5 per cent.

Read it all.

Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, is preparing to launch a 'forceful' overhaul of the government by appointing his most trusted acolytes to oversee the financial, technology and other sectors https://t.co/mQWZnHwX8Y

— FT China (@ftchina) March 2, 2023

The world’s most populous country has reached a pivotal moment: China’s population has begun to shrink, after a steady, yearslong decline in its birthrate that experts say is irreversible.

The government said on Tuesday that 9.56 million people were born in China last year, while 10.41 million people died. It was the first time deaths had outnumbered births in China since the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong’s failed economic experiment that led to widespread famine and death in the 1960s.

Chinese officials have tried for years to slow down the arrival of this moment, loosening a one-child policy and offering incentives to encourage families to have children. None of those policies worked. Now, facing a population decline, coupled with a long-running rise in life expectancy, the country is being thrust into a demographic crisis that will have consequences not just for China and its economy but for the world.

Over the last four decades, China emerged as an economic powerhouse and the world’s factory floor. The country’s evolution from widespread poverty to the world’s second-largest economy led to an increase in life expectancy that contributed to the current population decline — more people were living longer while fewer babies were being born.

Read it all.

“Government handouts like cash for babies and tax cuts, have failed to change the underlying fact that many young Chinese people simply do not want children.” https://t.co/RcBTHwCW7O

— Marc Porter Magee 🎓 (@marcportermagee) January 17, 2023

Emmanuel, God with us, who didst make thy home in every culture and community on earth: We offer thanks for the raising up of thy servant Samuel Azariah as the first indigenous bishop in India. Grant that we may be strengthened by his witness to thy love without concern for class or caste, and by his labors for the unity of the Church in India, that people of many languages and cultures might with one voice give thee glory, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and for ever. Amen.

The Church of England also commemorates Vedanayagam Samuel Azariah, Bishop in South India, Evangelist, 1945 https://t.co/LgbzgSu8XW pic.twitter.com/ewELZ0itXb

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) January 2, 2023

O God, who in Christ Jesus hast brought Good News to those who are far off and to those who are near: We praise thee for awakening in thy servant Lottie Moon a zeal for thy mission and for her faithful witness among the peoples of China. Stir up in us the same desire for thy work throughout the world, and give us the grace and means to accomplish it; through the same Jesus Christ our Savior, who livest and reignest with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

One of the best ways Southern Baptists can continue to promote the true reason for Christmas — Immanuel, God with us — is by giving to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. https://t.co/wWMXqvKNua

— ERLC (@ERLC) December 22, 2022

Splitting water using electrolysis is relatively straightforward, and is already done in some hydrogen-generating facilities with access to a conventional water supply. The process, which takes place in an electrolyser, electrically separates hydrogen from oxygen and allows the hydrogen to be siphoned off. But with seawater this is more complicated because salt and other impurities can effectively destroy the electrolyser.

One option is to desalinate and purify seawater before processing it — but in some settings that can add cost. Another option is to treat the electrolyser components chemically to avoid corrosion, but that is viewed as impractical.

Now Heping Xie at Shenzhen University and Zongping Shao at Nanjing Tech University have come up with a workaround. They kept the electrolyser separate from the seawater with a waterproof, breathable membrane. A bit like a sieve, the membrane keeps anything other than pure water vapour from entering the electrolyser. As the water vapour is drawn in and converted to hydrogen, more is pulled in from the seawater to take its place. It is, they reported recently in the journal Nature, a self-sustaining system.

Read it all.

Chinese researchers claim to have produced hydrogen by splitting seawater without the need to desalinate or purify it first, according to a report in Chemistry World magazine https://t.co/g4Q7HdGBex

— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) December 14, 2022

Given that China was already struggling to contain the disease, this is an odd time to loosen restrictions. Other once-isolated places, such as Singapore and Taiwan, prepared for a spike in cases by administering vaccines, stockpiling antiviral drugs and expanding intensive-care units (icus); only then did they gradually open up. China seems to be throwing precaution to the winds. On December 7th it eased its controls by, for example, lifting test requirements for most public venues and letting people with mild infections isolate at home rather than in state-run centres. If the government has a plan to avoid the surge of infections and deaths this could bring, nobody can say what it is—indeed, the lack of clarity alone would severely undermine it.

The easing comes amid mounting public pressure, a sign that the government could not indefinitely sustain its excessively harsh zero-covid policy. For two years this let most Chinese enjoy a normal, virus-free existence and kept the economy humming. The spread of Omicron, though, meant that more and more people had become ensnared in the government’s controls. The economy was suffering. Frustration boiled over last month, when protests occurred in cities across the country.

A more accountable government might have acknowledged its errors while laying out the steps needed to leave zero-covid gradually, when life-saving measures were in place. But Xi Jinping and the Communist Party are rushing ahead, ready or not.

All signs point to not.

Read it all.

Chinese officials and state media have suddenly begun telling people that Omicron is fairly harmless, no worse than the common cold. This is both jarring and disingenuous https://t.co/srRpWNthZo

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) December 8, 2022

The United States has expanded its list of the world’s worst violators of religious freedom.

Two new nations—Cuba and Nicaragua—were added on Friday to the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC). Two others—Vietnam and the Central African Republic (CAR)—were added to its Special Watch List (SWL). And one new organization was added to its list of Entities of Particular Concern (EPC): Russia’s mercenary Wagner group, due to its cited offenses in CAR.

“Around the world, governments and non-state actors harass, threaten, jail, and even kill individuals on account of their beliefs,” stated Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State. “The United States will not stand by in the face of these abuses.”

His own watchdog, however, is unconvinced.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) tweeted its “outrage” over the non-inclusion of Nigeria and India. It is “inexplicable,” the independent bipartisan organization continued, given the State Department’s own reporting.

Read it all.

The US has expanded its list of the world’s worst religious-freedom violators.

Should Nigeria and India have been included?https://t.co/gdqcYRueaS

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) December 5, 2022

The cold war, in which America and the Soviet Union menaced each other with tens of thousands of nukes, was scary enough. In the new age America confronts not just Russia but also China. New weapons—among them hypersonic missiles that are hard to detect and shoot down, and space and cyber weapons that threaten command-and-control systems—may unsettle the nuclear balance. Worse, decades of arms-control agreements may end by 2026. A new nuclear-arms race looms. Many think that it has already started.

Admiral Richard last year sounded the alarm that China was staging a “strategic breakout”. This month he warned that America was losing the military contest: “As I assess our level of deterrence against China, the ship is slowly sinking.” President Joe Biden says America faces a “decisive decade” in which to shape the global order. In a flurry of national-security policy documents this autumn his administration classifies Russia as the “acute” threat and China as “the “pacing challenge”.

“By the 2030s the United States will, for the first time in its history, face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries. This will create new stresses on stability and new challenges for deterrence, assurance, arms control, and risk reduction,” declares the Nuclear Posture Review (npr).

Stratcom says it needs a new generation of theorists.

Read it all.

How will #America deal with three-way #nucleardeterrence ? https://t.co/voD8CXeENr #russia #ukraine https://t.co/voD8CXeENr

— Akeel Haider (@AkeelHaider) November 30, 2022

What happens in Tokyo matters. Japan is America’s single most important ally, and the strategic bond between the two powers is the foundation of America’s position in the Indo-Pacific. Japan’s decision to double down on its American alliance while building up its own capabilities is a major setback for China’s effort to reshape East Asia. In the Philippines and Southeast Asia, Japanese investment and trade help counter China’s economic power. Japanese diplomacy, less hectoring and more culturally sensitive than America’s sometimes abrasive preaching on issues like human rights, is often more effective in Asian capitals. The steady development of closer Japanese relations with India and Australia has been a major factor behind the rapid evolution of the Quad.

Much remains to be done. Japanese-Korean relations, despite some improvements under South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, remain difficult. Japan itself, with a stagnant economy and the highest debt-to-GDP ratio in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, will be hard put to sustain the necessary military buildup.

But at this point it is the U.S. that must do more to secure the peace of East Asia. Given the long military supply lines across the Pacific and the likely difficulty of providing supplies if hostilities break out, the U.S. should position substantial quantities of weapons and supplies in the region. American as well as Taiwanese and Japanese officials told me that current stockpiles are woefully insufficient.

Beyond that, Washington still needs a regional economic strategy. Expanding economic integration between the U.S. and friendly Asian economies is an essential dimension of any long-term policy for the Indo-Pacific.

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What happens in Tokyo matters. Japan’s decision to double down on its American alliance while building up its own capabilities is a major setback for China’s effort to reshape East Asia, writes @wrmeadhttps://t.co/GSeafmnW0C

— Wall Street Journal Opinion (@WSJopinion) November 29, 2022

The Bishop of St Albans, Dr Alan Smith, has condemned the “wide range of human-rights abuses” committed in China against Christians and other religious groups.

He was speaking in a debate that he initiated in the Grand Committee of the House of Lords on Thursday.

Dr Smith said that he had been almost reluctant to call the debate because of his long-held admiration for China and its people. “Yet I feel I cannot remain silent in the face of such a wide range of human-rights abuses,” he said.

There was “a vast cultural gulf” between the UK and China, he continued, which was laid bare in President Xi’s speech last month to the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, in which the President had said: “We will . . . continue to take the correct and distinctively Chinese approach to handling ethnic affairs. . . We will remain committed to the principle that religions in China must be Chinese in orientation and provide active guidance to religions so that they can adapt to socialist society.”

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Last week, the racial-justice officers for the diocese of Chichester, the Revd Martha Mutikani and the Revd Dr Godfrey Kesari, called on the Church of England to “embrace minority communities” and “give them much more space” in leadership roles….

Delivering “Thought for the Day” on Radio 4’s Today Programme on Tuesday morning, the Rector of St James’s, Piccadilly, the Revd Lucy Winkett, said that “to acknowledge the UK’s first Hindu Prime Minister is a source of great significance and positivity, whatever the party politics, and to mark with gladness that a person of Global Majority Heritage, practising a faith that is followed by 1.2 billion people around the world, has become the first among equals in the British constitution.

“Given this, the very best thing that citizens of the United Kingdom, whatever their ethnicity, background or religion, can do, to honour this significant moment, is to expect the highest standards of integrity and courage,” Ms Winkett continued.

Mr Sunak took his oath as an MP on the Bhagavad Gita. In an interview with The Times in July, he said of his faith: “It gives me strength, it gives me purpose. It’s part of who I am.”

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“This political instability has real life consequences. People, families and children are paying the price with a lack of targeted support for those hardest hit by the cost-of-living crisis," said @markrusselluk, chief executive of @childrensocietyhttps://t.co/cazQbZBqXt

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) October 25, 2022

Erik van Nimwegen, from the University of Basel, says there are only small scraps of information and it is “hard to pull anything definitive out of that”. He adds, “one cannot really exclude at all that such a constellation of sites may have occurred by chance”. The authors of the paper concede this is the case. Kristian Andersen, a professor of immunology and microbiology, at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, described the pattern, on Twitter, as “random noise”.

Any conclusion that sars-cov-2 was engineered will be hotly contested. China denies the virus came from a Chinese lab, and has asked for investigations into whether it may have originated in America. Dr Washburne and his colleagues say their predictions are testable. If a progenitor genome to sars-cov-2 is found in the wild with restriction sites that are the same, or intermediate, it would raise the chances that this pattern evolved by chance.

Any widely supported conclusion that the virus was genetically engineered would have profound ramifications, both political and scientific. It would put in a new light the behaviour of the Chinese government in the early days of the outbreak, particularly its reluctance to share epidemiological data from those days. It would also raise questions about what was known, when, and by whom about the presumably accidental escape of an engineered virus. For now, this is a first draft of science, and needs to be treated as such. But the scrutineers are already at work.

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Controversial new research suggests SARS-CoV-2 bears signs of genetic engineering … china is responsible if this holds uphttps://t.co/Y37S4YCNHN

— FxMacro (@fxmacro) October 24, 2022

Merciful God, who didst call William Carey to missionary work in India and didst endue him with a zeal for thy Word that led him to translate Scripture into many local languages and dialects: Give us a heart for the spreading of thy Gospel and a thirst for justice among all the peoples of the world; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who sheds thy light and peace throughout humanity, and who livest and reignest with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

#OTD August 17, 1761
Birth of William Carey, pioneer English missionary to India. He taught at the newly founded Fort William College of Calcutta from 1801 until his death, and helped found the Serampore Press, which made the Bible accessible to over 300 million people. pic.twitter.com/4fgGnoyY61

— ☧ Today in Christian History (@LizBrown217) August 17, 2022