12 African Artists Leading a Culture Renaissance Around the World

In one of his famed self-portraits, Omar Victor Diop, a Senegalese photographer and artist, wears a three-piece suit and an extravagant paisley bow tie, preparing to blow a yellow, plastic whistle. The elaborately staged photograph evokes the memory of Frederick Douglass, the one-time fugitive slave who in the 19th century rose to become a leading abolitionist, activist, writer and orator, as well as the first African American to be nominated for vice president of the United States. Diop is no stranger to portraying the aches and hopes of Black people…

Your Wednesday Briefing: Zelensky Addressed the U.N.

Good morning. We’re covering President Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to the U.N., a modification to Shanghai’s controversial family Covid policy and political tensions ahead of the French presidential election. Zelensky addresses the U.N. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine delivered a fiery speech to the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, a day after visiting Bucha, where images have surfaced of civilian bodies in the wake of Russia’s retreat. Zelensky said that more than 300 people had been tortured and killed in the town north of Kyiv and that soldiers raped women in…

Chinese Tourists Aren’t Coming Back Any Time Soon

On Jeju Island in South Korea, the markets have gone dark. In Bangkok, bored hawkers wait around for customers who never come. In Bali, tour guides have been laid off. In Paris and Rome, the long lines of people with selfie sticks and sun hats are a distant memory. This was supposed to be the year travel came back. In Europe and Asia, many countries reopened their airports and welcomed tourists. But they are confronting a new reality: Variants such as Omicron are causing global panic, leading governments to shut…

What AUKUS Means for U.S.-China Great Power Competition

This is a hallmark of great power competition: Competitive initiatives like AUKUS provide visible ways to counter or balance or complicate China’s military activities but don’t necessarily help allies meet defined objectives. More often, competition becomes an end in itself — an open-ended imperative that assumes everything an opponent dislikes must be good policy. Another common feature of competitive policies is that officials tend to overlook their costs. For one thing, AUKUS carries significant diplomatic costs at a time when the United States is in desperate need of credibility with…

At Jaeger-Le Coultre, Time for Dessert

Haute cuisine and haute horlogerie may not seem like the most obvious companions, but to Nina Métayer, they are meant for one another. The Paris-based pastry chef has created four desserts for the Swiss watchmaker Jaeger-LeCoultre’s 1931 Café, an attraction that accompanies an exhibition celebrating the 90th anniversary of its Reverso model. The 8,600-square-foot display, “Reverso: Timeless Stories Since 1931,” opened this summer at K11, an arts center in Shanghai, and is scheduled to move to 15 Rue Faubourg-St. Honoré in Paris in October. Ms. Métayer, 33, said craftsmanship, small…