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🌎  7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW

• China appears to quell protests: After nationwide protests over the weekend, Chinese authorities have promptly clamped down on anti-lockdown activists the past two days, with police arresting demonstrators, censoring millions of social media posts, and canceling of scheduled protests in Beijing and other cities.

• Kyiv Christmas, Pope v. Russian Minorities: Christmas trees will be put up around Kyiv despite the war, said Vitali Klitschko, mayor of the Ukrainian capital. "We cannot let Putin steal our Christmas." Meanwhile Moscow criticized Pope Francis’ singling out the Chechen and Buryat ethnic minorities as some of the "cruelest" Russian troops fighting in Ukraine.

• Somali troops end hotel siege: After a 20-hour battle, Somali security forces regained control of the Villa Rose hotel, ending a siege Tuesday by the al-Shabab extremist group that had seized the establishment used by government officials in the Somali capital of Mogadishu. At least 14 people were killed, including eight civilians.

• Three Palestinians killed in Israeli forces clashes: Three Palestinian men, including two brothers in their 20s, have been killed by Israeli forces in two separate incidents in the occupied West Bank. Israel’s search-and-arrest raids have left at least 140 Palestinians dead this year, the highest number of casualties since 2006.

• Markets rebound: News that Beijing was mulling changes to its zero-COVID policy sent Asian markets up, with Chinese stocks in Hong Kong jumping 5% by closing Tuesday.

• U.S. Iran face off in Qatar World Cup: The United States and Iran soccer teams will meet today in a politically charged game at the World Cup in Qatar which will see the loser eliminated from the competition.

• Nasa's Orion capsule breaks distance record: The Orion spacecraft, at the core of NASA’s Artemis I mission, has moved some 430,000 kilometers (267,000 miles) from the Earth, the furthest any spacecraft designed to carry humans has ever traveled.

🗞️  FRONT PAGE

“China stops the call for freedom” titles Amsterdam-based De Telegraaf which dedicates its front page to the protests in China against the Zero-COVID policy. The latest demonstrations led to massive arrests of protesters and authorities presumably censored millions of social media posts about or in support of the citizen uprising.

💬  LEXICON

Mpox

Following complaints that the word monkeypox fueled racist tropes and stigmatization, the World Health Organization will now start using “mpox” to designate the disease that was first discovered in humans in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Health experts also said the old nomenclature was imprecise since monkeys have almost nothing to do with the disease and its transmission. Both names will be used simultaneously for one year until monkeypox is phased out.

📰  STORY OF THE DAY

Chinese students' “absurd” protest against COVID lockdowns: public crawling

While street demonstrations have spread in China to protest the strict Zero-COVID regulations, some Chinese university students have taken up public acts of crawling to show what extended harsh lockdowns are doing to their mental state, reports Shuyue Chen in Chinese-language media The Initium.

🎓 Crawling in public has become a popular activity among Chinese university students recently. At first, it was for the sake of "fun." Xin, like many who participated, thought it was a "cult-like ritual" in the beginning, but she changed her mind. "You don't care about anything when crawling, not thinking about the reason why, what the consequences are. You just enjoy it." The reality out there for Chinese university students has been grim. For Xin, her university started daily COVID-19 testing in November, and deliveries, including food, are banned.

😷 Lockdowns in schools and the ever-intensifying political atmosphere in China have made university students like Xin depressed. All the news made her feel "suffocated," she said. She wanted to express her emotions, but there were no outlets. State-controlled media limited comments and discussions, while with strict censorship meant social media accounts are regularly blocked if COVID controls are discussed. Xin said that the public group crawling is "for people to forget these things temporarily, and to air our frustration in a simple way."

🚫 But crawling was deemed to be a more radical way of expression — and indeed soon caught the attention of the authorities. The day after Xin's crawl, she received an "urgent reminder" from her friend — photos and videos of students crawling had been leaked to teachers, and school authorities were now tracking down those who had participated. Her school's sports fields were immediately closed down, and students were gathered in an assembly to be told that “one should not crawl on the ground.”

➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com

📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO

➡️ Watch the video: THIS HAPPENED

📣 VERBATIM

“The so-called ‘golden era’ is over.”

— In his first major foreign policy speech, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said it was the end of the “golden era” between the UK and China, as the “naïve idea that trade would lead to social and political reform” had shown its limits. Sunak added that it was time to “evolve our approach to China,” albeit without resorting to “simplistic Cold War rhetoric.” During his party leadership campaign earlier this year, Sunak was criticized for being too soft on China.

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