Amy Hawkins

ARGENTINA HAS become the latest, and most populous, country in Latin America and the Caribbean to legalise abortion. On December 30th its Senate voted to legalise terminations in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy; previously abortions had been permitted only in cases of rape or when the mother’s health was in danger or the fetus malformed. As well as legalising many of the roughly 500,000 abortions that already take place each year in Argentina, according to campaigners, the change will increase the proportion of women in Latin America and the Caribbean with access to legal abortion from 3% to 10%.

“THERE IS ONLY one outlet for truth, which makes all other voices rumours.” So declared Zhang Zhan, a Chinese journalist who, at the height of the country’s coronavirus outbreak, offered first-hand accounts that often contradicted the government's official narrative. In the end, the government agreed with her, and deemed her a rumour-merchant.

Getting into Zhao Dai, an underground nightclub in a fashionable part of Beijing, involves a little more faff than it once did. Party animals must prove that they have not travelled anywhere they might have picked up covid-19, by showing doormen a code generated by a government mobile app. Once inside, however, the smoke-filled basement is just as sweaty as usual. On a recent Saturday a hundred unmasked revellers bopped to techno tunes. No one bothered to maintain social distancing while dancing.

ALTHOUGH TWO billion people around the world regularly eat insects, consumers in the West have historically shunned them as a food source. But concerns about the environmental impact of food production are putting insects on the menu: they are rich in protein and more sustainable to produce than meats such as beef or pork.

When Nadeen Ashraf was walking through a wealthy part of Cairo last month, she was not surprised to hear sexual comments aimed her way. Most women in Egypt have experienced sexual harassment or violence. But her catcaller was surprised when the 22-year-old philosophy student jumped into the taxi he was driving. “I had an hour-long conversation with him,” she recalls. “It was so foreign to him that this was sexual harassment.”

ON A RAINY day in central London in April 2008, Laurence Lee, then a presenter for Al Jazeera, a broadcaster, told viewers that that year’s Olympics in Beijing would be “the most heavily politicised Olympics since Moscow in 1980.” Mr Lee was reporting from the London stretch of the global torch relay, at which pro-Tibet protesters clashed with police as they tried to draw attention to human-rights abuses in China.

“HUMAN BEINGS have overrun the world.” So laments Sir David Attenborough, a world-famous nonagenarian naturalist, in his new film, “David Attenborough: A Life on our Planet”. The film charts the “devastating changes” that humans have wrought on the planet’s biodiversity. All told, we have driven at least 680 vertebrate species to extinction since 1500.

ON SEPTEMBER 9TH a Chinese international student at Rice University in Houston found a nasty surprise waiting for her at her apartment. While she was out, someone had scrawled the word “spy” in capital letters across her front door, and again on the knocker. She was “pretty scared,” says Iris Li, a childhood friend and fellow student in America who shared the pictures online. “She doesn’t feel safe in that community."

Within a week of discovering she was pregnant in late April, Sylvie (not her real name) knew she wanted an abortion. The pandemic had made her the sole breadwinner, and she had a young daughter to look after. She called Marie Stopes, a charity, which arranged a phone consultation with a representative from BPAS, another charity, at her local hospital. Four days later a packet of medicine arrived through the letterbox, and she terminated her pregnancy at home with the support of her partner. Abortion is a “horrible thing,” she says. But “in terms of how it was handled, it couldn’t have gone better”.

“I love China,” declared Boris Johnson, then mayor of London, in 2013, exhorting British children, his own included, to study Mandarin. Seven years on, he is a lot less keen on China, and the vogue for studying Mandarin seems to be fading.

Under China's new civil code, adopted in May, couples will have to wait 30 days between registering their intent to split for good and actually doing so. Nothing wrong with that, some might argue—many other countries have similar “cooling-off” requirements. On matters related to marriage, Chinese law is still remarkably liberal. Yet weeks after the restriction was introduced (it will take effect in January), many netizens remain furious. It will, they say, imperil the lives of women.

In September 2018, Matthew Torne, a British filmmaker, released the third in his trilogy of documentaries about Hong Kong. “Last Exit To Kai Tak” is a bittersweet chronicle of five Hong Kongers who, after the disappointment of the pro-democracy “umbrella” protests of 2014, grapple with what is left for them in the city, as its liberties are chipped away by an increasingly bellicose Chinese government. The burning question, as one character puts it, is this: “revolution or emigration?”

In many ways , Gao Moumou was lucky. She had a good job as a product director in Beijing for Dangdang, an e-commerce firm, which allowed her to save enough money for her gender-reassignment surgery. Her office gave her time off to recover, but on September 6th, 2018, less than three months after her surgery, Dangdang fired Ms Gao, citing her “continuous absenteeism”. Ms Gao thinks the real reason was transphobia. In January this year a court in Beijing surprised many by agreeing with her.

In a trial in Canada later this year, one of the questions is whether Cindy Gladue liked rough sex. Specifically, if she liked it rough enough to consent to digital penetration that tore an 11cm wound in her vaginal wall. Ms Gladue bled to death, so she cannot testify. Bradley Barton, charged with her manslaughter, says her death was a tragic accident. Mr Barton’s case, a retrial, will be heard in November. The verdict in another case is expected on July 31st.

It might have been the most polite bank robbery in New York’s history. At half past five in the afternoon on January 10th a man in a Chicago Bulls baseball cap walked into a Chase Bank branch in Brooklyn and handed a note to the teller. “This is a robbery,” the message said, in handwritten red ink. “Big bills only.” He walked out with $1,000. The man accused of the heist is Gerod Woodberry. Less than four hours before the Brooklyn incident, Mr Woodberry had been released from police custody after being

It was a mortifying moment. Crouched in a bush, Katie was confronted by a dog owner whose hound had discovered her al fresco lavatory. The woman remonstrated loudly that (pooch practices notwithstanding), Katie shouldn’t relieve herself in a public place. “It was quite embarrassing and awkward as I was mid-pee, and I just tried to explain it was a desperate situation,” she recalls.

THERE IS an island 180km off the coast of China. Its democratically elected leaders say they run a country called the Republic of China. To the Communist government in Beijing the island is “Taiwan, China” or “Taiwan Province, China”. International organisations, desperate not to offend either side, struggle to name it at all—many opt for the deliberately ambiguous “Chinese Taipei”, after its capital city. To most it is just “Taiwan”,

Late in 1990, when Paul Kagame was hiding on the Congolese side of the Virunga Mountains preparing to invade Rwanda, his army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, were not the only formidable inhabitants of that densely forested volcanic range.

Pity the pangolin. With its hard covering and ability to roll into a small ball when threatened, the scaly anteater, as it is also known, has an advantage over most predators. But it cannot repel humans. Pangolins, which are endangered, are the most trafficked wild mammals in the world. Most end up in China.

Zhang Yali remembers the pains of living in the Chinese countryside when she was growing up. On the mountainside in rural Shanxi, the northern province where her family lived, snakes and scorpions lurked. If they did not bite, the mosquitos cert