Your Friday Briefing – The New York Times

0

President Biden has announced that the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, died during an assault in Syria led by about 20 American commandos. Rescue workers said women and children were among at least 13 people killed in the raid in Atmeh, a town near the border with Turkey in the rebel-held Idlib province.

Witnesses described the raid to The Times. A passerby said US forces issued surrender demands over a loudspeaker to a woman apparently in the house with children, and he believed missiles were then fired at the house amidst a burst of gunshots.

However, US officials said al-Qurayshi perished while detonating a bomb. Little is known about the leader of the Islamic State, who died when he lived most of his life: off the grid in the jihadist underworld.

The context: The raid came days after a battle around a Syrian prison where Islamic State fighters were being held, the largest US involvement in the fight against Islamic State since the end of the caliphate three years ago.

US officials said Russia planned to use a fake video showing an attack by Ukrainians on Russian territory or against Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine, intended to fabricate a pretext for an invasion of the country.

US officials won’t release any direct evidence of the Russian plan or say how they learned about it, saying it would compromise their sources and methods. But a recent Russian disinformation campaign gave credence to the intelligence.

The Kremlin said yesterday that the US plan to send 3,000 more troops to Eastern Europe over concerns over Ukraine was aimed at ‘stirring up tensions’. Its spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, described the American deployment in Poland and Romania as a threatening act “close to our borders”.

Australia, the government says, is ready to “live with the virus” after nearly 95% of adults there have been vaccinated. But many people don’t feel ready to move from an 18-month approach of covering up every case to one in which the floodgates are wide open.

When a state announced it was ending intensive contact tracing, people started doing theirs through a Facebook group. After Australia’s Prime Minister said lockdowns were a thing of the past, many people in Melbourne and Sydney stayed home as Omicron cases spiked in what has been dubbed a “phantom lockdown”. And despite the reopening of borders, the travel-loving nation has largely stayed put.

Asia-Pacific countries are not keen to emulate what Australia has done, with Japan, South Korea and Thailand suspending or canceling reopenings. New Zealand is taking a more cautious approach, gradually reopening to foreign travelers over the next nine months.

Numbers: The Omicron tide peaked at 150,000 daily new cases on January 13. Before this wave, Australia had never reached 3,000 cases in one day. And last Friday, the country had its deadliest day of the pandemic, reporting 98 deaths.

Here are the latest pandemic updates and maps.

In other developments:

The story of Britain’s Pakistani community, the country’s largest Muslim community, begins in 1947. After the war, British Pakistanis played a vital role in rescuing the country’s seedy economy. More recently, Pakistani doctors have helped fill a staff shortage in the National Health Service.

But the aftermath of 9/11 has opened a Pandora’s box for British Muslims, including British Pakistanis, with an increase in Islamophobic attacks. Through a series of essays and photographs, The Times asks: who are British Pakistanis today? And what does it mean to overlap the hyphen between “British” and “Pakistani”?

Jean-Jacques Beineix, the French director often credited with launching the genre known as cinema du look, died last month at 75.

Seventy years ago this Sunday, a story in the headlines in the time marked the end of one era and the beginning of another: Princess Elizabeth, aged 25, became queen on February 6, 1952, after her father, King George VI, died in his sleep at 56 year. 115 years a woman has ascended to the most exalted and stable throne in the world,” the Times reported.

At 95, Queen Elizabeth II is the world’s longest-reigning monarch and the only British monarch to ever celebrate a Platinum Jubilee. His 70-year reign encompassed profound changes, including the shrinking of the country’s empire, with many historians considering Hong Kong’s handover in 1997 as his last gasp.

Throughout it all, Elizabeth remained a mainstay of British royal traditions, never abandoning the formality and pageantry of the role. Yet the actions of his descendants have ushered the royal family into a new chapter, often characterized by more time in the spotlight – and a sometimes rocky relationship with the media.

Many will recall the image of the Queen weeping alone last year at the physically distanced funeral of Prince Philip, her husband of 73 years. But in her Christmas speech, Elizabeth expressed hope that her platinum jubilee would be “an opportunity for people around the world to enjoy a sense of togetherness”. Celebrations are planned around the world.

Share.

Comments are closed.