One 12 months of battle
Ukraine is bracing for potential Russian assaults timed to the anniversary of the battle at present. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has warned of a symbolic “revenge” assault from Russia across the one-year mark of Moscow’s invasion.
Faculties throughout Ukraine are holding courses remotely, individuals have been suggested to keep away from giant gatherings and extra safety measures are being put in place. We’ve got updates right here.
One 12 months on, nearly nobody in Ukraine has averted the violence, destruction and bloodshed of the battle, which has killed tens of 1000’s, left tens of millions homeless and turned whole cities into ruins. However the foreboding that gripped Ukraine within the days earlier than the invasion has lengthy light.
Now, many individuals in Ukraine mentioned that that they had discovered energy within the shared sacrifice and the collective wrestle for survival. Some have turn out to be accustomed to the air-raid sirens and warnings. One 30-year-old Ukrainian mentioned these issues had turn out to be part of on a regular basis life, “like brushing my enamel.”
A worldwide look: The U.S. tried to isolate Russia by imposing sweeping sanctions together with its Western companions. However the remainder of the world has taken a extra impartial method to the battle, together with India and China, as our graphic exhibits.
The most recent on weapons: Poland mentioned that it was near finalizing a deal price $10 billion to purchase further U.S.-made HIMARS rocket launchers and associated tools, as a part of a speedy navy buildup. Because the West scrambles to seek out munitions for Ukraine’s Soviet-era weapons, it’s turning to arms factories throughout Jap Europe.
China: Janet Yellen, the U.S. treasury secretary, warned Beijing towards serving to Russia evade sanctions, at a gathering of G20 finance ministers in India. She additionally mentioned that the U.S. deliberate to unveil further sanctions on Russia.
Within the lead-up to voting day, a call by Nigeria’s authorities to exchange its forex brought about chaos. Voters are livid on the governing social gathering over a scarcity of recent financial institution notes, and protests might disrupt voting in elements of the nation.
Lynsey Chutel, our Briefing author primarily based in Johannesburg, spoke with our West Africa bureau chief, Ruth Maclean, who’s in Abuja to cowl the election. Right here’s what Ruth mentioned about what’s at stake.
“Once I interviewed Peter Obi, one of many three important candidates, the opposite day, he described this as an ‘existential election.’ I believe that’s what number of Nigerians really feel, notably younger Nigerians who had been concerned within the EndSARS motion a few years in the past, protesting towards police violence, but additionally towards every little thing they noticed going fallacious in Nigeria. A lot of them have left or try to depart the nation. If their chosen candidate wins, possibly some will keep, or come again,” Ruth mentioned.
As populations in rich international locations get older, Africa’s median age is getting youthful. In Nigeria, half of the inhabitants of greater than 200 million is eighteen and below.
“If Nigeria is secure and affluent, it brightens life for an entire era of Africans,” Ruth mentioned.
Well being care protests in China
Hundreds of seniors in China are protesting abrupt cuts to their medical insurance. The modifications had been enacted by native governments, and spotlight their wrestle to get better from the prices of implementing the central authorities’s costly “zero Covid” insurance policies for almost three years.
Some of the rapid issues is that municipal insurance coverage funds are working out of cash. To release money, municipalities have began contributing a lot much less to private well being accounts, the insurance coverage that middle-class individuals use to pay for drugs and outpatient care. Seniors are most susceptible to the modifications, which embrace larger prices and diminished advantages.
Protests have taken place within the northeastern metropolis of Dalian, in Guangzhou, and in Wuhan in central China, the place the Covid pandemic started on the finish of 2019. Wuhan’s hospitals responded with an efficient however costly effort to include the outbreak, and are actually implementing among the sharpest cuts to private well being accounts.
Context: The cuts are a symptom of China’s overlapping financial struggles. The nation is growing older quickly, and extra retirees imply extra well being care wants. But the principle supply of municipal income has shriveled as actual property builders purchase much less public land due to a housing shakeout.
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ARTS AND IDEAS
ChatGPT’s scary banality
When the films imagined A.I., they pictured the fallacious catastrophe, our critic A.O. Scott writes. As an alternative of the chilling rationality of HAL in “2001: A House Odyssey,” we received the drearier, very human awfulness of Microsoft’s Sydney. As a result of when actual chatbots lastly happened, they realized from what people have expressed on-line, which may typically be deceitful, irrational and plain outdated imply.
“We’re kind of reconciled to the truth that machines are, in some methods, smarter than we’re,” Scott writes. “We additionally benefit from the fantasy that they may turn into extra delicate. We’re due to this fact not ready for the chance that they may be chaotic, unstable and resentful — as messy as we’re, or possibly extra so.”
In China: Tech corporations making chatbots are dealing with hurdles from the federal government.
And within the arts: Science fiction magazines are being flooded with tales written by chatbots. They’re “dangerous in spectacular methods,” one editor mentioned.
