Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited Tibet for the first time since 2011 on Wednesday to laud the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s progress in assimilating the Himalayan region to Han ethnic culture since China launched an occupation of the majority Buddhist territory in 1950, China’s official state-run Xinhua press agency reported Friday. Chinese state media waited 48 hours to officially report that Xi had arrived in Tibet on July 21. His unannounced visit to Tibet shocked observers worldwide, as China is currently reeling from record-breaking floods across its north-central and southwest regions, including in Sichuan province, a region of China directly bordering Tibet. The “once in a thousand years” floods have killed at least 51 people in central China, though the death toll from the historic flooding is likely much higher than state outlets have reported. China’s Global Times mentioned Sichuan province in its July 23 report on Xi’s visit to Tibet, though the CCP … [Read more...]

On Wednesday afternoon, Mark Levine, the New York City Council member and likely the next Manhattan borough president, met me on a busy corner of Broadway, a few blocks from his apartment, in Washington Heights. He had invited me to his neighborhood for a tour and a conversation about mask use in the city. “How is it in there?” he said, jerking his head toward a bodega behind me. He meant mask-wise. We walked in to find out. Inside, a half-dozen people were browsing the cold drinks. A few were masked up, a few had masks across their chins, and some went maskless. Levine, masked, grabbed a bottle of water and made small talk in Arabic with a guy working the register–Levine calls himself a language buff—then walked back out into the afternoon. “I’d say there’s now fifty per cent mask wearing in bodegas, on a good day,” he said. This, for Levine, was bad news. Levine, who is fifty-two and sports a tidy salt-and-pepper beard, has spent almost eight years on the City Council, where he is … [Read more...]

THIS is not how I envisioned my first meal in Paris, I thought as I stood in front of L’Agrume . I did not take a three-chapter-long Métro ride to a boring part of the Fifth Arrondissement to eat at a place with a banner in the window advertising a 14-euro lunch menu. Inside, the chalky lavender walls were the same color as the hostess’s angora dress, summoning my inner design snob. But the welcome was so genuinely warm, I immediately got over myself and remembered why I had come all this way: since he opened L’Agrume in December, the 37-year-old chef Franck Marchesi-Grandi had been getting raves for his five-course 35-euro dinner, making him a prime candidate for my Parisian quest to find bargain menus from rising French chefs. The first course — halved fingerling potatoes tossed in a foamy vinaigrette cushioned with cubes of foie gras — embodied the new style of cooking that I would experience throughout the week: good ingredients, nonchalantly presented and paired with sauces … [Read more...]