Why China won 2017 and how Donald Trump helped them do it
Updated 0016 GMT (0816 HKT) November 4, 2017
Chinese President Xi Jinping will have a lot to smile about when he meets his counterpart Donald Trump in Beijing this week.
By any reasonable measure, it's been a good year for China. From the South China Sea to climate change to jockeying over global leadership, the dominoes have fallen in Beijing's favor again and again.
Even the death of a Nobel Peace Prize winning activist while in Chinese police custody -- an event that under normal circumstances would have provoked lasting international condemnation -- failed to tarnish the country's leadership in any tangible way.
Is it too late to save the world? Jonathan Franzen on one year of Trump's America
As the ice shelves crumble and the Twitter president threatens to pull out of the Paris accord’, Franzen reflects on the role of the writer in times of crisis
If an essay is something essayed – something hazarded, not definitive, not authoritative; something ventured on the basis of the author’s personal experience and subjectivity – we might seem to be living in an essayistic golden age. Which party you went to on Friday night, how you were treated by a flight attendant, what your take on the political outrage of the day is: the presumption of social media is that even the tiniest subjective micronarrative is worthy not only of private notation, as in a diary, but of sharing with other people. The US president now operates on this presumption. Traditionally hard news reporting, in places like the New York Times, has softened up to allow the I, with its voice and opinions and impressions, to take the front-page spotlight, and book reviewers feel less and less constrained to discuss books with any kind of objectivity. It didn’t use to matter if Raskolnikov and Lily Bart were likable, but the question of “likability,” with its implicit privileging of the reviewer’s personal feelings, is now a key element of critical judgment. Literary fiction itself is looking more and more like essay.
Some of the most influential novels of recent years, by Rachel Cusk and Karl Ove Knausgaard, take the method of self-conscious first-person testimony to a new level. Their more extreme admirers will tell you that imagination and invention are outmoded contrivances; that to inhabit the subjectivity of a character unlike the author is an act of appropriation, even colonialism; that the only authentic and politically defensible mode of narrative is autobiography.
Dozens of sexual abuse allegations filed against UN personnel in the last three months
'We're seeing allegations that date back a few years because people feel freer and safer to come forward'
Dozens of new cases alleging sexual abuse or exploitation byUnited Nations (UN) personnel, nearly half of which involve its refugee agency, were filed between July and September.
Not all of the allegations have been verified and some are in preliminary assessment phase, said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
During the three month period, 14 investigations have been launched and one case has been proven, he said.
Of the 31 cases, 12 involve military personnel from peacekeeping operations including those in the Central African Republic and Mali.'Barbie candidate': Chilean MP hands out dolls in her likeness
Team Observers
Paulina Núñez Urrutia, a Chilean MP, took the unusual step of distributing dolls in her own image on October 29 in Antofagasta as part of her re-election bid. (Images posted on her Facebook page.)
People have since been ridiculing her for the publicity stunt online – but the doll giveaway was in fact illegal, according to the Electoral Service (Servicio Electoral).
Núñez Urrutia – a member of Renovación Nacional, a right-wing opposition party – has represented the region of Antofagasta in the Chilean Chamber of Deputies since 2013. (The Chamber of Deputies is the lower house of parliament). Last Sunday, she distributed these dolls (and hugs) to both children and adults in a market in Antofagasta. The giveaway was also attended by Cristián Monckeber, the president of the Renovación Nacional party. According to local media, Núñez Urrutia handed out about 10,000 dolls.
Sanctions bite North Korea and China on both sides of the Friendship Bridge
Kirsty Needham
Dandong, China: With swift precision and a fixed gaze the young women sit silently assembling parts with slender fingers, their hair tied back in pony tails.
These women are from North Korea, and the spotless, light-filled factory room they are working in is within a new industrial estate in the Chinese river town of Dandong – North Korea's economic lifeline.
Ninety per cent of North Korea's foreign trade is with China. Of that, two-thirds goes through Dandong, which sits metres across the Yalu River from the hermit kingdom, connected by a single bridge.
Three hundred women have worked here for three years, sleeping in factory dormitories, offered simple food so that their appetites aren't "spoiled" by the comparative opulence of the Chinese diet when the time comes for them to return to Pyongyang. They can't go outside.
Texas releases disabled migrant girl Rosa Maria Hernandez
A 10-year-old undocumented Mexican migrant with cerebral palsy, detained last month after undergoing surgery in Texas, has been released to her family.
The release of Rosa Maria Hernandez was confirmed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro.
Her detention, which came after border agents stopped the ambulance taking her to hospital, caused an outcry.
Mr Castro said it was still not clear if she faced deportation from the US.
The ACLU had filed a lawsuit earlier this week seeking the child's release.
"Rosa Maria is finally free," said ACLU lawyer Michael Tan in a statement on Friday.
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