This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic.... Read about others here.Yu Lihua, a writer whose nuanced portraits of overseas Chinese students and intellectuals in America captured the cultural displacement and identity crisis felt by many in the Chinese diaspora, died on April 30 at her home in Gaithersburg, Md.... She was 90. The cause was respiratory failure brought on by Covid-19, said her daughter Lena Sun, a reporter for The Washington Post wh

“ What matters is not what you oppose but what kind of life you desire, ” said Anne Jieping Zhang, the owner of bookstores in Taipei and Chiang Mai, Thailand.... They came for a seminar about Qiu Jin, a Chinese feminist poet and revolutionary who was beheaded more than a century ago for conspiring to overthrow the Qing dynasty. Like them, Ms.... Qiu’s life. Public discussions like this one used to be common in big cities in China but have increasingly been stifled over the past decade....

Busy lives leave little time for distant events with unfamiliar protagonists. Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has become a rare exception, its butchery in plain view via saturation coverage for anyone with a video screen.... But Americans may not yet have absorbed this disturbing reality: The American president who left office just 14 months ago sided with the butcher.... It's not just that Donald Trump recently hailed the" genius" of Putin's strike against Ukraine....

On June 26, South Africa marked the 60th anniversary of the Freedom Charter that became an action program for all South African anti-racism forces. Approved by 3,000 delegates to the Congress of the People, who arrived from all regions of the country, this document was a response to the National Pa

The entire Valdai Discussion Club moved Tuesday to the newly restored Valdai Monastery, which provided a historical setting to discuss inter-religious and inter-ethnic dialogue. In the morning session, official representatives of Russia’s leading religions – Orthodox Christianity, Islam and Judaism

They tagged her with the code name Frida.... Even Pravda, the official broadsheet of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, condemned her by name, and others like her, for their efforts to tear Ukraine away from the USSR. Opinion: How Ukrainian politics became the most Canadian of politics Ms.... Freeland, in a written statement to The Globe and Mail, said: “ I am aware that my work with pro-democracy and environmental activists invoked the ire of the Soviet KGB....

She used clothes and jewelry to send tart, political messages. One favorite was a snake brooch, a reference to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein calling her an" unparalleled serpent." She wrote a book about her signature jewelry, one of several bestsellers, explaining that the pins were a diplomatic tool.... Balloons or flower pins would indicate she felt optimistic, while a crab or turtle would indicate frustration. Born Marie Jana Korbelova in Prague on May 15, 1937, her family fled in 1939 to Lond

Many of his far-right, antisemitic writings are too extreme for even the Kremlin to publicly embrace.... It’s not even a country, ” said former Trump advisor Stephen K. Bannon on Feb.... “ There are multiple people all of whom are mediated by the circle around Putin, ” she said, “ that united together to support this disastrous invasion.” Putin himself last year named three influences during an address to the Valdai Club, a prominent Moscow think tank, Laruelle noted....

Ukraine could become permanently entrenched as a tool in the hands of external forces, with little room for independent foreign policy or meaningful geopolitical manoeuvre, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Ivan Timofeev. The failure of negotiations between Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky a

Russia is demonstrating a trend towards isolationism, albeit not all along the line and not all the time. Despite our growing dependence on the outside world, we understand it less and less.