We’re covering NATO’s plans to bolster its eastern troops and the Taliban’s reneged promise to open girls’ schools.
NATO bolsters troop presence near Ukraine
NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, announced plans to double the alliance’s battlegroups on its eastern flank — in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia — hours before President Biden was set to land in Brussels for a major summit with allies.
The NATO action and the upcoming meetings are part of a coordinated effort by the West to push for tougher penalties to prevent Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from growing into a wider conflict. Biden is expected to target Russian lawmakers with new sanctions this week.
On the ground in Kyiv, Ukraine, a hail of rockets landed in a residential area near the city center, causing extensive damage but few casualties. Russia’s progress has been slow: British intelligence has suggested that the battlefield in the north of the country has stayed largely static for days. Here’s a map tracking the movement of troops in Ukraine.
Appeals abroad: In brief remarks to Japan’s Parliament, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, appealed to the country’s memories of nuclear disaster and a chemical-weapon attack in an attempt to garner support.
Across Asia, Covid rules are swiftly disappearing
Covid restrictions had largely vanished in India by the time millions of people celebrated a Hindu festival last weekend. In the Philippines, where thousands gathered at a political rally on Sunday, Covid protocols had taken a back seat.
Many Asian-Pacific countries are dismantling their yearslong Covid rules at breakneck speeds, even though the Omicron variant of the coronavirus is still raging in parts of the region. The changes are driven by a mix of medical advice, economic pressures and the sentiment of a pandemic-weary public.
New Zealand announced plans to loosen more restrictions, which had been some of the world’s toughest. And Japan, which had some of the tightest entry barriers, is considering removing quarantine requirements for foreign businesspeople and students.
The one major exception is mainland China, which continues to have strict Covid restrictions after long adhering to its “zero Covid” approach.
In other pandemic news:
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West and Central African countries have fared better with Covid than many wealthy ones. The debate about the reasons has divided scientists.
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Moderna said it would seek emergency authorization of its coronavirus vaccine for children younger than 6 in the U.S.
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South Korea asked crematories to increase their capacity and funeral homes to secure more refrigerators as Covid deaths surge.
Taliban renege on promise to open girls’ schools
The Taliban abruptly reversed their decision to allow girls’ high schools to reopen this week, saying that they would remain closed until officials could assure their accordance with Islamic law.
Many of the over one million high-school-aged girls who had grown up in an era of opportunity for women were devastated by the news. Some found out after they had already arrived for classes yesterday. One 12th-grade student in Kabul said the decision had stamped out her last bit of hope that she could achieve her dream of becoming a lawyer.
A spokesman for the Taliban’s Ministry of Education said they had decided not to allow girls to return because of a lack of a religious uniform and female teachers, among other issues.
The move could threaten the Taliban’s ability to secure billions of dollars of humanitarian aid. It comes a little more than a week before a pledging conference where the U.N. had hoped donor countries would commit millions of dollars in badly needed assistance. Both the U.N. and the U.S. condemned the Taliban’s decision.
Elsewhere in Afghanistan: While many girls were blocked from classrooms in Kabul and elsewhere, at least two northern cities began their semesters as planned, a geographic discrepancy indicative of the Taliban’s largely erratic policymaking.
THE LATEST NEWS
Asia Pacific
Faced with a soaring divorce rate, China introduced a law last year forcing couples to undergo a 30-day “cooling off” period before finalizing their separation. The rule appears to have worked; recent government statistics show a steep drop in divorces. But the country has a much bigger challenge: Fewer Chinese citizens are marrying in the first place.
ARTS AND IDEAS
Filming Gotham (in Liverpool)
In the newest Batman movie, released earlier this month, the skyscrapers and imposing architecture of the fictional metropolis Gotham are featured prominently.
But rather than filming in New York — the city most closely associated with Gotham — “The Batman” used the streets of Liverpool as the latest backdrop for the superhero.
Gotham’s city hall is actually St. George’s Hall in Liverpool, and a statue shown outside in the movie is Benjamin Disraeli, a 19th-century British prime minister. “The Batman” is the latest in a string of movies and TV shows — fueled especially by streaming services like Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime — to bring production to Britain.
More than 80 percent of the spending on film and high-end TV productions in Britain is from American and other overseas production companies. But local authorities have also capitalized on the trend. Liverpool’s film office invested $2.6 million in six TV shows and set aside millions more for studio space.
For more on “The Batman,” check out our Anatomy of a Scene feature.
