Taiwan

Dragon boat races returned in parts of China on Friday for the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic in late 2019, as restrictions are lifted along with a major drop in COVID-19 cases. The historic Lychee Bay scenic area in the southern Chinese manufacturing hub of Guangzhou staged races and other scaled-back celebrations to mark the holiday that commemorates the death more than 2,200 years ago of revered poet and government minister Qu Yuan. Restrictions on the length of events and the size of crowds remained in place but did little to dampen the mood. Along with dragon boat races, which feature teams of up to a dozen or more paddlers, the holiday is marked by community gatherings and the enthusiastic consumption of steamed rice dumplings cooked with meat, peanuts and other ingredients and wrapped in green leaves bound with string. China recorded just 74 new COVID-19 cases on Friday and restrictions have been eased in cities such as Shanghai , which had … [Read more...] about As COVID retreats, dragon boat races return in south China

IN 1988, during the Palestinian intifada, the Israeli Defense Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, referring to Palestinian protesters, reportedly told Israeli soldiers to "go in and break their bones." Rabin's standing with the public began to rise thereafter. In 1992 hard-line Israeli voters switched to the Labor Party, only because Rabin headed the ticket. As Prime Minister, Rabin used his new power to start peace talks with the Palestinians and the Jordanians. Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995, is now judged a hero by enlightened public opinion the world over. In 1970 and again in the 1980s King Hussein of Jordan cracked down brutally on the Palestinians. Had Hussein been subject to Western judicial procedures, he might have been implicated in mistreating considerable numbers of people through his security services. Yet Hussein's crackdown saved his kingdom from those who would have been less just in office than he was. Western admirers of Rabin and Hussein prefer to forget their … [Read more...] about The Return of Ancient Times