Good morning. We’re covering Russia’s nationalist holiday, Hong Kong’s new leader and a Taliban decree targeting women. |
| A tank drives down a Moscow street in a rehearsal for the military parade.Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters |
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Today is Russia’s Victory Day, a militaristic holiday that commemorates the Soviet Union’s defeat of the Nazis in World War II. Under President Vladimir Putin, the holiday has come to celebrate modern Russian military might. |
Over the weekend, Moscow’s forces renewed their assault in eastern Ukraine in a scramble to show progress before the holiday. On Sunday, Ukrainian officials said a Russian airstrike leveled a school in the region that was being used as a shelter. Dozens of civilians may have died. |
In congratulatory messages on Sunday, Putin praised the leaders of the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics — two Russia-backed breakaway territories in the east — for their role in what he described as a fight against “Nazi filth.” |
Mariupol: All women, children and elderly people were evacuated from the steel plant. In a virtual news conference from a bunker beneath the plant, the soldiers there vowed to fight on. “We here are basically dead men,” one officer said. “Most of us know this. This is why we fight.” |
| John Lee celebrated his uncontested victory with his wife on Sunday.Isaac Lawrence for The New York Times |
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Beijing’s man will lead Hong Kong |
Lee, the top architect of the crackdown on Hong Kong’s antigovernment protests in 2019, plans to push through laws on treason, secession, sedition and subversion, and to root out critics in the civil service. He inherits a city that has been tamed and cowed: Sweeping national security laws imposed two years ago have quashed dissent, gutted the free press and put critics behind bars or sent them into exile. |
Quotable: “Even in Iran, there is more of a contest for the head of government,” one expert said. |
| The full-body burqa has been long emblematic of patriarchal control of women’s public attire in Afghanistan.Kiana Hayeri for The New York Times |
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New restrictions on Afghan women |
A burqa is the preferred garment, but the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice — which replaced the previous government’s Ministry of Women’s Affairs — did not mandate burqas as long as women otherwise cover themselves with a hijab. |
Failure to do so could result in a jail sentence for the male head of the woman’s family. The relatively few women still permitted to hold jobs could be fired if they do not comply with the decree. |
History: The Taliban required the burqa, which leaves only a woman’s hands and feet visible and includes a stitched facial netting for vision, when it ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. |
Eid: For many Afghans, the end of Ramadan showed the dissonance between the promise of peace many had imagined and the realities of the end of the war. |
| Police used tear gas and a water canon to disperse protesters near Sri Lanka’s parliament on Friday.Ishara S. Kodikara/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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- Sri Lanka’s strongman president declared a state of emergency, his second in recent weeks, amid protests over the deepening economic crisis — and his leadership.
- North Korea tested a submarine-launched missile on Saturday, which could extend the range of its nuclear arsenal.
- The U.S. is pushing Taiwan to order American-made weapons for asymmetric warfare, which would help its small military repel a seaborne invasion by China.
- Misinformation is spreading in the Philippines with the approach of the presidential election.
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- In a seismic shift driven by Brexit, the nationalist party Sinn Fein won the most seats in Northern Ireland’s government.
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| Sonny Leon, the jockey, with Rich Strike, the horse.Xavier Burrell for The New York Times |
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| The statue sits in a dusty basement for now. |
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Louis Faidherbe, a French general, helped shape Senegal’s former capital — and also led brutal military campaigns in West Africa. Now, the city is divided over what to do with a bronze statue of him that has stood in a central square for more than a century. |
| Paul Fenech won the Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist competition last month.Abigail Varney for The New York Times |
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For nearly 30 years, “Elvi” — the plural of Elvis, at least at the largest Elvis festival in the Southern Hemisphere — have blurred the line between fans and impersonators. This year, after a pandemic hiatus, there were more pompadours and leisure suits than anyone can count: About 25,000 people usually come to rejoice. |
“It lets us forget everything,” said Gina Vicar, 61, a small-business owner from Melbourne who had come to the festival with a dozen friends. “With all that we’ve gone through, and what the world is going through now, it’s great to see all this joy.” |
There are performances and rhinestones, gold-rimmed sunglasses and dad bods. “The festival has become a national treasure that exemplifies how Australians tend to do a lot of things: all together, with self-deprecating humor and copious amounts of alcohol,” writes Damien Cave, our Sydney bureau chief. |
Read Damien’s personal account of the trip to the festival, here. |
| Romulo Yanes for The New York Times |
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That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — Amelia |
P.S. Nick Confessore spoke about his three-part investigation into Tucker Carlson on “Reliable Sources,” a CNN podcast hosted by Brian Stelter. |
The latest episode of “The Daily” is on anti-abortion activists in the U.S. |
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