Your Friday Briefing: Men Flee Russian Conscription

Men fleeing Russia, fearing military service

A day after President Vladimir Putin announced plans to enlist 300,000 civilians, thousands of Russians get the scratch paper and get on the bus to training sites. Others to leave the country in a hurrypaid high prices to catch flights to Armenia, Georgia, Montenegro and Turkey, some of which allow Russians to enter without a visa.

Russian officials said the summons would be limited to those with combat experience. But a journalist said her husband, a father of five with no military experience, was summoned.

Our reporter spoke with a 23-year-old who bought a plane ticket to Istanbul, ended his business, and kissed his crying mother goodbye – all in the span of about 12 hours since Putin notification. He said he doesn’t know when he’ll be back. “I’m sitting and thinking about what I could die for, and I don’t see any reason to die for the country,” he said. This is live updates.

Monitoring: Time get nearly 160,000 files from Russia’s powerful internet regulator, which the government uses to find opponents and eliminate dissent. Compared to China, much of the work of Russia’s censors is done manually, but what Moscow lacks in sophistication makes up for in determination.

Japan backs falling yen

Japan announced yesterday that they have intervened to raise the value of the yen for the first time in 24 years, in an attempt to stem the currency’s continued slide against the dollar.

Yesterday, the yen crossed $145 after the US Federal Reserve notification on Wednesday that it will raise its policy rate by 3/4 percentage point. The yen has lost more than 20% of its value against the dollar in the past year, and it is the worst performer of all major developed economies This year.

Text definition: The yen’s decline was largely due to Japan’s determination to keep interest rates low. Government intervention following an announcement by the Bank of Japan that it will quickly follow through with its longstanding super-low interest rate policy – even as most other countries have begun to follow the Reserve’s increase United States of America.

History: For many years, the weak yen was widely seen as a boon to its export-oriented economymaking Japanese products cheaper and more attractive to consumers abroad.

Elsewhere: Bank of England increase basic interest rate by half a point to 2.25 percent yesterday, the highest level since 2008. It is the latest attempt to tame high inflation.

Prosecution of Khmer Rouge

For more than 15 years, a court in a military camp in Cambodia has prosecuted crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge regime that caused the deaths of some 1.7 million Cambodians in the late 1970s.

At the final hearing yesterday, it rejected Khieu Samphan’s protest91 years old, the last living leader of the fanatical communist movement, upheld his convictions and life sentence for genocide and other crimes.

Many victims think the UN-backed court, which spent more than $330 million, is an empty exercise conducted long after the atrocity was committed. Only three people were convicted, and many high-ranking Khmer Rouge figures – including its notorious top leader, Pol Pot – were long dead by the time the court was established.

Story: From 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge caused the deaths of nearly a quarter of the population by execution, torture, starvation, and untreated disease as they sought to abolish modernity and create an agricultural utopia.

LATEST NEWS

Asia Pacific

Fake news is on the rise in India, with a flurry of misinformation following the rise of Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist prime minister. Alt News, an independent website, has emerged as a leading researcher on disinformationsuch as stories about gangs kidnapping children and Muslims spreading Covid.

But highlighting hate speech against minorities has put it on a collision course with Modi’s government: A founder was recently arrested and accused of sowing unrest. community.

ARTS AND IDEAS

Tolkien, for the Italian right wing?

Italy’s national elections take place on Sunday. Giorgia MeloniThe far-right politician, who is at the forefront of becoming the country’s next prime minister, has a surprising personal manifesto.

Meloni loves “The Lord of the Rings” and watches the fantasy adventure series written by JRR Tolkien, is something of a sacred text. As a youth activist in the post-Fascist Italian Social Movement, she used to dress as a Hobbit.

It seems like a youthful infatuation. But in Italy, “The Lord of the Rings” informed generations of post-fascist youth. They looked to the age of traditional Tolkien mythology in search of symbols, heroes, and creation myths free of the Nazi taboos, from which they could recreate a hardened identity.

Meloni, 45, says she has learned from dwarves, elves and hobbits about the “value of concreteness” with “everything indispensable to reality being concrete”. She extrapolated that it was a lesson in defending sovereign nations and Europe’s unique identity.

“I think Tolkien can say better than us what conservatives believe,” Meloni said. “I don’t consider the fantasy ‘Lord of the Rings’.”