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Given that politics is now largely about opinions — things you say rather than things you do — the emergence of global online communication platforms has provided a glorious digital brewery in which discontent and division can hideously ferment. Judgment, vehemence and loathing can be calmly dispatched in cold and solitary certainty.

Perhaps even before the virus, before Brexit, we had all been quarantined in our own naked individualism — an isolation far more toxic.

There we were, incarcerated and alone inside the penitentiary of our temporal identities with no faith or care for anything other than the fleeting fulfillment of our wayward wants.

Ultimately, it is the island of self that we must either leave or remain trapped within.

Although many winners may quickly be evident on election night, the increase in mail voting because of the pandemic is expected to push back the release of full results in many key states.

Usually the number of provisional votes is not large enough to be significant, but there is evidence from early voting that this election may be different.

The results at the beginning and at the end of the night will be skewed in some places.

After election night, there could also be misleadingly positive results for Mr. Trump in certain states, with mail ballots trickling in over the following days favoring Mr. Biden.

Holder cited a GOP legal challenge to drive-through voting sites in a Texas county and an order from the Texas Republican governor limiting ballot drop boxes.

He also pointed to Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott's proclamation to limit mail-in ballot drop box locations to one site per county as "cheating."

In the final days before the presidential election, state Republicans and Democrats in battleground states have been battling in the courts, bringing some cases to the US Supreme Court, seeking last minute approval to change election rules amid the coronavirus pandemic, especially regarding whether mail-in votes can arrive after Election Day and still be counted.

"I think we want to make sure that we get our ballots in and our votes in so we don't leave it to the court to make any decisions here," he said.

It is seeing that the Republican Party wants to limit the number of people who want to vote. Democrats are trying to get as many people to vote and have as many votes counted as is possible,"

The order, first issued in October, significantly affects the Democratic stronghold of Harris County, the state's most populous county.

"That is cheating. I defy Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, to explain a good logical reason why you would have one drop box in Harris County -- 4 million people, bigger than I think the state of Rhode Island -- why you would limit it to one drop box. You only try to gain partisan advantage. All the other reasons that they put forward are simply nonsense,"

"They're trying to steal this election," he added.

The Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in favor of Abbott's order, saying it "provides Texas voters more ways to vote in the November 3 election than does the Election Code" and that it doesn't "disenfranchise anyone."

The Islamic Prophet Muhammad started preaching a monotheistic faith called Islam in his hometown of Mecca from 610 CE onwards.

Equality, egalitarianism, equal rights for women (who had been hitherto considered “property” by the Meccans), and the prospect of heaven attracted many towards Islam.

Despite putting forth strict persecution of the new religion and its preacher, Meccans failed to contain the Muslim community.

Medina offered Prophet Muhammad sovereignty over the city, making him the first ruler and king (r. 622-632 CE) of what was later to become the Islamic or Muslim Empire. The city-state of Medina soon came into conflict with Mecca, and the latter was conquered, after years of warfare, in 629/630 CE.

At the morrow of Prophet Muhammad’s death, the Islamic Empire slid to the brink of disintegration, as many advocated pre-Islamic home-rule system. This threat, however, was averted when Abu Bakr (r. 632-634 CE) proclaimed himself the Caliph of the Prophet and the first supreme ruler of the Islamic realm.

Abu Bakr now sought to expand his realm beyond the Arabian Peninsula. The Muslim Empire bordered two superpowers: the Byzantine Empire (330-1453 CE) and Sassanian Empire (224-651 CE) to the north-west and north-east respectively. These two colossal powers often clashed violently in prolonged wars, had exhausted their resources, and severely repressed Arabian tribes living in the Middle East in the course of pursuing ultimate power. For Abu Bakr, this was an opportune moment, although he may not have known that.

Never content with wasting an opportunity, the Caliph sent Khalid, who had now distinguished himself as a war hero, to raid Iraq (633 CE). The duo stuck to the western side of the Euphrates, where they enjoyed much success, employed eager locals in their ranks, and countered Sassanian advances towards the conquered territory.

Abu Bakr died in 634 CE, and his successor Umar ibn al-Khattab (r. 634-644 CE) took charge as the second caliph of the Islamic Empire and the "commander of the faithful". Caliph Umar reinforced the Iraqi front with fresh troops under the command of a reputable companion of the Prophet: Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqas (l. 595-674 CE).

With this defeat, Sassanian control over Iraq was shattered, the Rashidun troops soon swept over the land and even took Ctesiphon – the Persian capital, ironically located far off from their power base in Khorasan, the eastern province – located in modern-day Iran.

Umar’s successor Uthman (r. 644-656 CE) continued the military expansion undertaken by his predecessors. Yazdegerd III, who had escaped to the eastern parts of his kingdom, was murdered by a local at Merv in 651 CE.

Abu Bakr sent four divisions under Shurahbil ibn Hasana (l. 583-639 CE), Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan (d. 640 CE), Amr ibn al-As (l. c. 573-664 CE), and Abu Ubaidah (l. 583-639 CE) to raid Syria and the Levant.

The Rashidun forces continued to advance northwards in the Levant and Syria. They took Damascus in 634 CE, either through an assault or treason, defeated the Palestinian imperial division in the Battle of Fahl (Pella; 635 CE).

Honed for their shipbuilding skills, the Syrians were employed to create a formidable Rashidun fleet to challenge Byzantine authority in the Mediterranean. After defeating the Byzantine fleet attempting to retake Alexandria (646 CE), the Muslims went on the offensive. Cyprus fell in 649 CE, followed by Rhodes in 654 CE, and in 655 CE, the Byzantine naval authority was crushed with a victory at the Battle of the Masts. Muslims held uncontested control over the Mediterranean and sent raiding parties as far as Crete and Sicily.

At its peak, the realm of the Rashidun Caliphate spread from parts of North Africa in the west to parts of modern-day Pakistan in the east; several islands of the Mediterranean had also come under their sway.

The Byzantines and Sassanians were superpowers of their time but years of warfare had weakened the two colossal titans

Moreover, Arabs were never expected to pose any threat to them, these disunited desert dwellers did not have the numbers or the will to face an empire. This, however, changed as the Arabian Peninsula was united under the banner of Islam by 633 CE. Freed from the infighting that had plagued them for centuries, the Arabs directed their potential towards their neighbors. They considered a just war as a holy struggle and if death was to embrace them, they would be immortalized as martyrs.

Such a strong resolve, however, was lacking in their foes. Both empires employed mercenaries, and these men did not feel similar passion for their client state as the Arabs did for the Caliphate. Moreover, a multiethnic army lacked the coherence imparted by a single faith and unified national sentiment, but perhaps the most destructive penalty that these empires faced was because of how they treated their people in their provinces.

“doctors in the hospital did not identify the first SARS case immediately, because not all the criteria for the identification of SARS that had been defined by the WHO had been made available to Taiwan: unaware that the WHO was going to revise these particular criteria very soon, the medical personnel did not classify the patient as a SARS case and thus did not institute sufficient measures to prevent the spread of the virus right from the beginning.” Lindemann adds that, although it was not the only reason for Taiwan’s inadequate reaction to the SARS outbreak, government officials claimed that the lack of WHO assistance “made a bad situation worse.”

deliberate, systematic use of its digital health infrastructure.

Every person in Taiwan has a health card with a unique ID that all doctors and hospitals use to access online medical records. Providers use the card to document care episodes for reimbursement from the Ministry of Health. As a result, the card gives the ministry regular, nearly real-time data on physician and hospital visits and use of specific services.

When Covid-19 hit, the health card and electronic health records system were repurposed to fight the spread of the virus.

“Taiwan enhanced Covid-19 case finding by proactively seeking out patients with severe respiratory symptoms (based on information from the National Health Insurance [NHI] database) who had tested negative for influenza and retested them for Covid-19.” The availability of almost immediate data on patient visits allowed the country to efficiently identify, test, trace, and isolate cases. This has dramatically reduced Covid-19 spread without the need for extensive lockdowns.

we seem reluctant to allow the Department of Health and Human Services to monitor patient encounters, as Taiwan does, to track disease and determine what medical tests and treatments to order.

Insurers already get data based on hospital and physician claims, but only weeks or months after encounters, making the information less useful for tracking infectious outbreaks

It is a small island of just 24 million people, but it is at the center of the battle for global technological supremacy. Pound for pound, it is the most important place in the world. As the Cold War between China and the United States intensifies, that importance will only continue to grow.

After World War II, only two major emerging economies managed to grow faster than 5 percent for five decades in a row and to rise from poverty into the ranks of developed economies. One was Taiwan, the other South Korea

They kept advancing up the industrial ladder by investing more heavily in research and development than did any of their rivals among emerging economies. Now they are among the research leaders of the developed economic world as well.

How did they accomplish this feat? Competent governments played a major role. South Korea nurtured giant conglomerates like Samsung and Hyundai, which exported consumer products under their own brand names. Taiwan cultivated smaller companies focused on making parts or assembling finished products for foreign brands

Today the flexibility goes a long way toward explaining its success.

Mixing overseas experience with young local graduates, the science parks became hothouses for entrepreneurial start-ups.

Going forward, many tech analysts predict that Taiwan’s business model gives it a clear edge. Most customers prefer a pure foundry that does not compete with them to design chips or build devices, and only Taiwan offers this service.

That is a big reason Apple has been switching from Samsung to T.S.M.C. for the processing chips in the iPhone and why Intel is expected to outsource production of its most advanced chips mainly to T.S.M.C.

Taiwan has tried to position itself as the “Switzerland” of chips, a neutral supplier, but it increasingly finds itself at the center of the jousting between China and the United States

Historically, the importance of Taiwan was calculated in geopolitical terms. A small democracy thriving in the shadow of a Communist giant stirred sympathy and support in Washington. Now, as a byproduct of its successful economic model, Taiwan has become a critical link in the global tech supply chain, adding economic weight to the geopolitical calculations.

The Asian-American coalition, by contrast, is demanding policies that in some way address those who are struggling and in need, and who are often people of color.

“Asian-Americans converge in several notable ways, including experiences with discrimination, voting behavior and attitudes on policies ranging from environmental protection to gun control to higher taxation and social service provision.”

The question for the Asian-American coalition, as for the Democratic Party as a whole, is what constitutes economic justice: the Clinton-Obama neoliberalism of favoring Wall Street and trade deals, with insufficient attention paid to the middle and working classes?

Or a more robust form of economic redistribution that would tax the wealthy at a higher rate, eliminate or greatly reduce student and medical debt, expand health insurance and child care, bolster public schools and enhance access to higher education?

As today’s Asian-American coalition sees it, no policy can be carried out effectively without paying attention to identities and differences

The majority of Asian-Americans, for example, support affirmative action, recognizing that it is needed to reduce inequities not only for African-Americans and Latinos but also for Pacific Islanders and poorer Asian-Americans.

Group interest and self-interest sometimes align and sometimes don’t, but solidarity entails that a coalition’s members sometimes seek justice for themselves, and sometimes for others.

A crucial lesson of the Asian-American coalition is that although celebrating diversity can sometimes draw attention away from issues of economic inequality, that does not mean that a focus on diversity, difference or identity ignores economic inequality. On the contrary, economic inequality in this country has always been built on racial differences.

Only the affirmation of racial differences, harnessed with a robust approach to economic justice, can help alleviate the many economic problems this country faces.

The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and subject them to deportation, trumped up confinement or forced sterilization.

The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.

In an America demographically reeling from immigration upheaval and torn by post-Reconstruction chaos, race conflict was everywhere in the early twentieth century. Elitists, utopians and so-called "progressives" fused their smoldering race fears and class bias with their desire to make a better world.

They reinvented Galton's eugenics into a repressive and racist ideology. The intent: populate the earth with vastly more of their own socio-economic and biological kind--and less or none of everyone else.

How? By identifying so-called "defective" family trees and subjecting them to lifelong segregation and sterilization programs to kill their bloodlines. The grand plan was to literally wipe away the reproductive capability of those deemed weak and inferior--the so-called "unfit."

Eighteen solutions were explored in a Carnegie-supported 1911 "Preliminary Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the American Breeder's Association to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population." Point eight was euthanasia.

The most commonly suggested method of eugenicide in America was a "lethal chamber" or public locally operated gas chambers.

Applied Eugenics also devoted a chapter to "Lethal Selection," which operated "through the destruction of the individual by some adverse feature of the environment, such as excessive cold, or bacteria, or by bodily deficiency."

Eugenic breeders believed American society was not ready to implement an organized lethal solution. But many mental institutions and doctors practiced improvised medical lethality and passive euthanasia on their own.

One institution in Lincoln, Illinois fed its incoming patients milk from tubercular cows believing a eugenically strong individual would be immune. Thirty to forty percent annual death rates resulted at Lincoln.

Some doctors practiced passive eugenicide one newborn infant at a time. Others doctors at mental institutions engaged in lethal neglect.

Only after eugenics became entrenched in the United States was the campaign transplanted into Germany, in no small measure through the efforts of California eugenicists, who published booklets idealizing sterilization and circulated them to German officials and scientists.

Hitler studied American eugenics laws. He tried to legitimize his anti-Semitism by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in the more palatable pseudoscientific facade of eugenics. Hitler was able to recruit more followers among reasonable Germans by claiming that science was on his side. While Hitler's race hatred sprung from his own mind, the intellectual outlines of the eugenics Hitler adopted in 1924 were made in America.

In Mein Kampf, published in 1924, Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American eugenics. "There is today one state," wrote Hitler, "in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States."

Hitler even wrote a fan letter to American eugenic leader Madison Grant calling his race-based eugenics book, The Passing of the Great Race his "bible."

In 1934, as Germany's sterilizations were accelerating beyond 5,000 per month, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe upon returning from Germany ebulliently bragged to a key colleague, "You will be interested to know, that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought.…I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people."

In the fall of 1950, the University of Münster offered Verschuer a position at its new Institute of Human Genetics, where he later became a dean. In the early and mid-1950s, Verschuer became an honorary member of numerous prestigious societies, including the Italian Society of Genetics, the Anthropological Society of Vienna, and the Japanese Society for Human Genetics.

Another in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's eugenic complex of institutions was the Institute for Brain Research. Since 1915, it had operated out of a single room. Everything changed when Rockefeller money arrived in 1929. A grant of $317,000 allowed the Institute to construct a major building and take center stage in German race biology. The Institute received additional grants from the Rockefeller Foundation during the next several years. Leading the Institute, once again, was Hitler's medical henchman Ernst Rüdin. Rüdin's organization became a prime director and recipient of the murderous experimentation and research conducted on Jews, Gypsies and others.

Leon Whitney, executive secretary of the American Eugenics Society declared of Nazism, "While we were pussy-footing around…the Germans were calling a spade a spade."

Mengele began searching the boxcar arrivals for twins. When he found them, he performed beastly experiments, scrupulously wrote up the reports and sent the paperwork back to Verschuer's institute for evaluation. Often, cadavers, eyes and other body parts were also dispatched to Berlin's eugenic institutes.

More than just providing the scientific roadmap, America funded Germany's eugenic institutions. By 1926, Rockefeller had donated some $410,000 -- almost $4 million in 21st-Century money -- to hundreds of German researchers. In May 1926, Rockefeller awarded $250,000 to the German Psychiatric Institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, later to become the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry

Human genetics' genocidal roots in eugenics were ignored by a victorious generation that refused to link itself to the crimes of Nazism and by succeeding generations that never knew the truth of the years leading up to war. Now governors of five states, including California have issued public apologies to their citizens, past and present, for sterilization and other abuses spawned by the eugenics movement.

The S-400 purchase drove a rift between the two countries that has resisted repair. Mr. Cevik said the country hasn’t yet deployed the missile batteries, though Mr. Erdogan has said he wants to buy more.

“The United States and Turkey have longstanding and deep bilateral defense ties, and Turkey’s continued NATO interoperability remains a priority,” a State Department spokesman said. Several NATO member states fly F-16s, including Turkey.

The proposed deal illustrates the complex national-security issues in the U.S. relationship with Turkey, a NATO ally and regional power that hosts thousands of American soldiers.

The deal faces significant skepticism among key senators who object to Turkey’s purchase of the Russian missile system, according to congressional aides. The leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sens. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) and James Risch (R., Idaho), have yet to take public positions on the deal.

“Our concern is, if we’re giving them military equipment, if they are going to be continuing to act in this aggressive manner towards Cyprus, toward the Greek islands,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R., N.Y.). “We’re concerned about our intellectual property being shared with Russia. [Turkey] is acting in many ways like an adversary.”

British sanctions over Turkey’s incursion into Syria would hinder Ankara’s purchase of the Eurofighter Typhoon, and France is unlikely to approve a sale of its Dassault Rafale fighters, in part because it sold planes to Turkey’s rival Greece last year, said Mr. Forrester.

“They may go to the Russians,” Mr. Jeffrey, the former ambassador, said. “And then you’ll have a descending spiral of accusations and bad feelings, and it will just reinforce going in the wrong direction. That’s why the F-16 is so important.”

Grassroots movements don’t have a great track record, he wrote. “

Some marchers went into party politics: One participant from Maine—a woman who’d never done anything political but vote before attending the Women’s March—went home and became the chair of the Maine Democratic Party. Only a fraction of the marchers kept taking their cues from the Women’s March organization itself. And that makes sense: The Women’s March encompassed an almost unbelievably broad array of concerns.

Some did run for office, and some won. The march itself encompassed a diverse coalition of interest groups and the convention that followed, in October 2017, hosted workshops on the messier aspects of political organizing.

The members of that group threw themselves into the fight against partisan gerrymandering and worked to pass a state ballot initiative for an independent redistricting commission. Now, the Michigan maps have been redrawn. Though it’s impossible to measure how much the Women’s March contributed to that outcome, it unquestionably played a part.

Change happens when people run for office, amass coalitions of interest groups, engage in the messy practice of politics.”

But the organizers of Women’s March didn’t get that memo. The nonprofit that grew around it treated its four leaders — Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez, Bob Bland, and Linda Sarsour — as celebrities, the visionary trailblazers at the head of a cohesive political movement.

Organizers of marches are rarely given such disproportionate credit for their events’ success. Seasoned activists know that power of a grassroots movement lies not in its branding or executive leadership structure, but in the people who show up and sustain it. And yet, the Women’s March foursome quickly claimed to speak for something far more decentralized and organic than their own narrative would suggest.

They were everywhere: at fashion shows, cutting in front of rank-and-file participants at events, on magazine covers that they complained were not distributed widely enough. They accepted awards, posed for glamorous photo shoots, and fought a two-year battle to trademark the phrase “women’s march,” which they eventually dropped.

But the Women’s March organization didn’t do much to refocus all that attention on the thousands of local organizers and millions of marchers who gave the march its meaning.

So when Mallory and Perez drew criticism for their support of noted sexist and anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, it was no big stretch for critics to use the leaders of the Women’s March to smear the entire movement.

The groundswell of women looking for community and purpose after Trump’s election needed some guidance—literally, marching orders. They did not need a clique of unelected spokespeople.

They had come to the Women’s March not as a unified people following a leader with a specific set of demands, but as individuals with a variety of related grievances, wanting to express a broad feeling of dismay at the direction the country was headed.

Many of them were inspired to undertake a deeper political education and find their place in other movements, including the fight to save the Affordable Care Act and the racial justice uprisings in the summer of 2020. In an alternate timeline, with no Women’s March to warm them up, would many of the white people at those Black Lives Matter marches have shown up at all?

The most memorable subsequent actions of the Women’s March—the groups that traveled to D.C. to beg their senators not to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the marches in the streets to protest the end of Roe v. Wade in Texas—what did they accomplish?

Protests and marches reassure people that they’re neither alone in their anger or fear, nor crazy for being angry and fearful. They introduce demonstrators to new friends and networks of political activity. There’s nothing like the rush of standing in a chanting crowd, sweating or shivering with thousands of people who share one’s outrage, to revive flagging willpower.

I’m sure there are plenty of Women’s Marchers who heaved a sigh of relief and went “back to brunch” after Joe Biden took office, thinking the work was done. But I don’t think that’s the prevailing view among the people who first woke up to politics when Trump became president. They watched, as we all did, as right-wing rioters took the Capitol last Jan. 6. They’re witnessing the dissolution of a broad voting rights bill at the hands of two Democratic senators. They’re watching abortion rights disintegrate in Texas and across the South. And they’re living through the hottest years in recorded history, bracing for the next hurricane or forest fire, as the people with the power to save life on Earth as we know it look the other way.

In this moment, under those conditions, with five years of hindsight, the Women’s March looks nothing short of revolutionary.

On April 1, 1814 Talleyrand convinced the French Senate to create a provisional government in Paris, with him as president. The next day, he led the French Senate in official deposing Napoleon as Emperor and forcing him into exile the island of Elba. On April 11, 1814, the French Senate, in approving the Treaty of Fontainebleau adopted a new constitution that returned power to the Bourbon monarchy.

Representing the aggressor nation, Talleyrand faced a daunting task in negotiating the Treaty of Paris. However, his diplomatic skills were credited for securing terms that were extremely lenient to France. When the peace talks began, only Austria, the United Kingdom, Prussia, and Russia were to be allowed to have decision-making power. France and the smaller European countries were to be allowed only to attend the meetings. However, Talleyrand succeeded in convincing the four powers to allow France and Spain to attend the backroom decision-making meetings. Now a hero to the smaller countries, Talleyrand proceeded to secure agreements under which France was allowed to maintain its pre-war 1792 boundaries without paying further reparations. Not only did he succeed in ensuring that France would not be partitioned by the victorious countries, he greatly enhanced his own image and standing in the French monarchy.

Though Napoleon was ultimately defeated in the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815, Talleyrand’s diplomatic reputation had suffered in the process. Bowing to the wishes of his quickly expanding group of political enemies, he resigned in September 1815. For the next 15 years, Talleyrand publicly portrayed himself as an “elder statesman,” while continuing to criticize and scheme against King Charles X from the shadows.

Upon learning of Napoleon’s death in 1821, Talleyrand cynically commented, “It is not an event, it is a piece of news.”

Talleyrand may be the epitome of a walking contradiction. Clearly morally corrupt, he commonly used deceit as a tactic, demanded bribes from persons with whom he was negotiating, and openly lived with mistresses and courtesans for decades. Politically, many regard him as a traitor because of his support for multiple regimes and leaders, some of which were hostile toward each other. On the other hand, as philosopher Simone Weil contends, some criticism of Talleyrand’s loyalty may be overstated, as while he not only served every regime that ruled France, he also served the “France behind every regime.”

“I am more afraid of an army of one hundred sheep led by a lion than an army of one hundred lions led by a sheep.”

And perhaps most self-revealing: “Man was given speech to disguise his thoughts.”

The severity of the charges is part of a concerted effort by the government to deter further public expressions of discontent, activists said.

“What reigns here is an empire of fear,” said Daniel Triana, a Cuban actor and activist who was briefly detained after the protests. “The repression here doesn’t kill directly, but forces you to choose between prison and exile.”

For six decades, Cuba has lived under a punishing U.S. trade embargo. The Cuban government has long blamed the country’s crumbling economy solely on Washington, deflecting attention from the effects of Havana’s own mismanagement and strict limits on private enterprise.

Cuba exploded into unexpected protest on July 11, when thousands of people, many from the country’s poorest neighborhoods, marched through cities and towns to denounce spiraling inflation, power outages and worsening food and medicine shortages.

After being initially caught by surprise, the government responded with the biggest crackdown in decades, sending military units to crush the protests. More than 1,300 demonstrators were detained,

The scale of the government’s reaction shocked longtime opposition figures and Cuba observers.

Cuba’s leaders had always reacted swiftly to any public discontent, jailing protesters and harassing dissidents. But previous crackdowns tended to focus on the relatively small groups of political activists.

“There’s not a single drop of compassion left,

But on his way back to work, he ran into a crowd that was demanding political change, said Ms. Rodríguez. Driven by a surge of indignation at the unbearable cost of living, Mr. García joined the march, she said.

He was beaten by the police who broke up the rally later that day, but came home to his wife that night. Four days later, he was cornered by the police near his home and taken to jail.

including five teenagers aged 17 and 16, the minimum age of criminal responsibility in Cuba. All are facing penalties of at least five years in prison; Mr. García is facing a 30-year sentence.

She said she only realized he had joined the protest when police came to arrest him several days later. Prosecutors are seeking a 23-year sentence against him for sedition.

“Through him I came to realize the evil that happens in this country,” she said, referring to her jailed son. “He didn’t do anything, apart from go out and ask for freedom.”

He was not part of the old guard that rose to power with the Castros.

In office, he tried streamlining Cuba’s convoluted currency system and introduced reforms to expand the private sector in an attempt to ameliorate a crippling economic crisis caused by the pandemic, sanctions imposed by the Trump administration and dwindling aid from the island’s Socialist ally, Venezuela.

When the protests broke out, he reacted with force.

“They don’t have any intention of changing,” said Salomé García, an activist with Justice J11, the rights group, “of allowing Cuban society any participation in determining its destiny.”

If conflict were to break out, policymakers argue, Japan could be dragged in, potentially putting at risk some of the islands in the Ryukyu archipelago in the country’s southwest.

The vast majority of Japanese have long opposed large increases in military spending, and there is little public support for amending the Constitution to remove the prohibition against offensive warfare.

About one out of 10 utility customers in the state have solar power, according to the California Solar and Storage Association.

noting that it can take workers up to six months to do so if they are swamped with projects.

To achieve its climate goals, the city has already banned the use of natural gas in new buildings, the largest local government in the country to do so.

The company added that it supports the use of solar panels by nearly 600,000 of its residential customers and electric cars owned by 360,000 customers.

When he was recently charging his Tesla at his home on Long Island, the electrical equipment that connected the utility’s power line to his home became so hot that it melted.

People who are pushing for greater investment say the spending will pay off by saving people money on monthly bills and preventing the worst effects of climate change.

That’s because people could generate some electricity through rooftop solar panels and store that energy in home batteries.

But if regulators allowed more utilities to offer lower electricity rates at night, people would charge cars when there is plenty of spare capacity.

Robert Barrosa, senior director of sales and marketing at Electrify America, said that eventually the company could help utilities by taking power when there was too much of it and supplying it when there was not enough of it.

Developing countries contribute a small fraction of the emissions from cars and power plants. But they're enduring some of the worst damage from climate change, like island nations that face being erased by sea level rise.

The U.S has committed to a 50% to 52% reduction in emissions by 2030,

Over that period, the U.S. has cumulatively emitted the most of any country.

The United Nations is calling on countries to be carbon neutral by 2050, which means if a country is still emitting greenhouse gas emissions, they're being absorbed by forests or other means to keep them from entering the atmosphere.

With hundreds of millions of people vulnerable to extreme weather like severe storms and droughts, developing countries secured a promise for $100 billion in climate finance annually from developed nations. The funding goes to projects like sustainable transportation and renewable energy, as well as helping communities prepare for more extreme events. Still, as of 2019, developed countries are still below the goal, which will be a point of contention in the COP26 negotiations.

officials urged residents of coastal areas in much of the West Coast, Alaska and Hawaii to stay away from the coastline and move to higher ground. The National Weather Service in Portland, Ore., reported possible one- to three-foot waves in some areas of Oregon and Washington.

In California, water surged into Santa Cruz Harbor on Saturday morning, damaging boats, submerging the parking lot and causing people to evacuate the docks, sidewalks and nearby stores

In the Bay Area, the National Weather Service said tsunami surges of up to a few feet could arrive in “pulses” throughout the day, and warned residents not to try to identify their arrival.

Jaclyn Rothenberg, a spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the agency did not expect damages from the tsunami, and stressed the importance of disaster preparedness.

She added that the agency had coordinated with its partners in American Samoa and Hawaii, which had “no impacts from this event.”

Across the Pacific warnings were sounded. New Zealand’s National Emergency Management Agency advised people in coastal areas to expect “strong and unusual currents and unpredictable surges at the shore.” And on their Facebook pages, the meteorological services for Fiji and Samoa also issued alerts, advising people to stay away from low-lying coastal areas.

The volcano, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, which is about 40 miles north of Tongatapu, had been relatively inactive for several years. It began erupting intermittently in December but by Jan. 3 the activity had decreased significantly, according to a report by the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program.

Satellite imagery of the eruption on Saturday, shared on Twitter by New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, showed a “brief spike in air pressure as the atmospheric shock wave pulsed across New Zealand.”

The V.E.I. of the eruption Saturday has not been estimated yet, but before the eruption, the volcano was estimated to be able to produce an eruption with a maximum V.E.I. of 2.

The goal of holding temperature rises to 1.5C rather than 2C is much harder to achieve, as it requires emissions cuts of at least 45% by 2030, compared with 2010 levels. But science shows it is much safer – beyond 1.5C, many of the impacts of climate breakdown, such as melting ice sheets, become irreversible, and many small islands would face inundation from rising sea levels and storm surges.

Under the "One China" policy, Beijing has insisted that any country that wants diplomatic relations with China must first break official ties with Taiwan. This has resulted in Taiwan's diplomatic isolation from the international community.

“This means that as long as we don’t commit terminal strategic blunders, China’s modernization will not be cut short, and on the contrary, China will have even greater ability and will to play a more important role in building a new international order,” Zheng Yongnian, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, who has advised senior officials, wrote after the invasion in a widely circulated article.

At the heart of China’s strategy lies a conviction that the United States is weakened from reckless foreign adventures, including, from Beijing’s perspective, goading Mr. Putin into the Ukraine conflict.

China’s path ahead is by no means certain. Drawing too close to Russia would risk entrenching animosity toward China in Europe and beyond, a possibility that worries Mr. Xi’s government, for all its bluster.

The United States’ allies in the Pacific, including Japan and Australia, “will also adopt a stronger military posture. So it all seems unfriendly to China.”

It’s not just China’s reputation in the West; I think it also affects China’s reputation in the non-West, because it’s essentially associating itself with an imperial power.”

In any case, China’s economy is large enough to absorb blows that would cripple others. Chinese companies may even end up well positioned to take advantage of Russia’s desperate need for trade, as happened when Moscow faced sanctions over the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

“Biden has repeatedly avowed that the United States is not in a ‘new Cold War’ with China, but China often feels the chill creeping in everywhere.”

Just as Mr. Putin depicts the United States as menacing Russia on its western frontier, Mr. Xi sees American support for Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy that Beijing claims as its own, as a similar threat off China’s coast.

“The West should not have become a hegemon in defining universal standards because the West or Europe, or the West in general is only part of humanity,” Mr. Dugin told a Chinese state television interviewer in 2019. “And the other part, a majority of human beings, live outside the West, in Asia.”

As it turns to Beijing for support against Western sanctions, Russia will become increasingly beholden to China as its diplomatic and economic lifeline, while serving as its strategic geopolitical ballast, analysts say.