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a Shahbaz, who was abducted at gunpoint and gang-raped before her wedding, is in hiding after being accused of apostasy for breaking off the marriage – an offence punishable by death in Islam.

More than 9,000 people have signed a petition asking the Prime Minister to grant the teenager and her family asylum in Britain to save her from ‘certain death’. Her supporters cite parallels with the case of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian who was hounded by Islamic vigilantes on her release from prison after bogus blasphemy charges.

Last night, Maira appealed directly to Mr Johnson. ‘I am very much scared due to threats to my life and my family. Please protect me,’ she said in a statement.

The schoolgirl fled her husband in August, five days after the Lahore high court ruled she had willingly converted to Islam and married Mohamad Nakash Tariq, a 45-year-old barber who lived near her family in the city of Faisalabad.

The ruling sparked protests in Pakistan where, according to human-rights groups, an estimated 1,000 Christian and Hindu girls are kidnapped each year and forced to convert to Islam.

Maira claims she was abducted on April 28 and held prisoner in a basement. She alleges that her captors drugged and raped her before forcing her to convert to Islam to marry Tariq. He denies her claims.

Sajid Christopher, a human-rights activist in Lahore who is supporting the teenager, said: ‘Maira is aware that if her abductor finds out where she is, she will be taken and killed. Dangerous men have been calling at their home and their neighbours’ homes trying to find out where the family are.’

Gang-rape of a 14-year-old not an issue, it seems, but apostasy by breaking off the marriage – death can be the only punishment for such a wicked crime.

Whitehall sources said concerns about the plight of girls in Pakistan had been raised last week by Foreign Office Minister Lord Ahmad during a meeting with Pakistan’s minister for human rights, Dr Shireen Mazari.

However, Home Office officials do not consider asylum claims lodged outside UK territory, instead advising those in need of protection to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach. Last night, a Government spokesman said: ‘Forcing women and girls into marriage is a serious abuse of human rights.’

In other words: oh dear what a shame, but no, we're not going to do anything. Asia Bibi, remember, appealed for asylum in the UK, but the appeal was denied because her presence might "stir civil unrest".

According to the Times (the article doesn't seem to be online), Maira says her captors filmed themselves raping her, using the footage to blackmail her into converting to Islam and marrying.

John Pontifex, head of press for Aid to the Church in Need: "For years more government overseas aid has gone to Pakistan than any other country. A fresh approach is needed." Well yes…

On Parkland Walk, at Crouch Hill:

Back in July the graffiti crew Foreign Koncepts had a woman in white at this spot, for Do1Cancer. It's since been sprayed over and defaced with tags – as tends to happen – but now this new face has appeared.

this illustrated that ordinary Tibetans were thankful to the party rather than the lamas for their “happy lives”.

The "carrot-and-stick tactics" are far more stick than carrot. What the article doesn't mention, and what the journalists on this guided tour would of course not have seen, are the camps – like the camps in neighbouring Xinjiang – which are now said to house as many as half a million Tibetans being "re-educated" in the glories of  President Xi's brave new socialist system.

ight to freedom of expression.

Suzanne’s story, like mine, is becoming Everywoman’s. Last year, Maya Forstater lost her job at a think tank for expressing views similar to my own; JK Rowling is abused on social media for her feminism. I’ve met countless women who are silenced by fear; Suzanne has too.

“Now, I feel a huge sadness,” Suzanne wrote, “when I look at the fragmentation of the landscape, where endless fighting, cancellations and no-platformings have obscured our understanding of who the real enemies are.”

I hope her story provokes others to speak up. As she concluded that courageous column about me: “There are more of us than you think.”

pidemic-sd6qjt8wwhttps://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/world/author-abigail-shrier-faces-threats-after-warning-of-trans-epidemic-sd6qjt8ww”>Will Pavia, in New York:

Shrier, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, interviewed parents, teenagers, transgender adults and some “de-transitioners” who had undergone treatment and then regretted it. She was careful to make a distinction between those with gender dysphoria — a confusion over the gender they were assigned at birth — who manifested it at an early age and teenagers who might exhibit gender dysphoria for the first time during adolescence.

"The gender they were assigned at birth"? Oh dear, not a good start. It's a meaningless phrase – though a popular one in trans circles – because of course genders aren't "assigned" at birth. People are born either male or female. It's basic biology.

Then:

Chase Strangio, a transgender rights activist and a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), responded to the tweet by joking that “stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on”.

By joking? He tweeted: Abigail Shrier’s book is a dangerous polemic with a goal of making people not trans. I think of all the times & ways I was told my transness wasn’t real & the daily toll that still takes. We have to fight these ideas which are leading to the criminalization of trans life again.

And then the next day: Also stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on.

Nothing jokey about it. No exclamation mark, no smiley face. He was deadly serious. And he deleted the tweet later.

Another supposed joke:

Grace Lavery, an associate professor at Berkeley University and an editor of Transgender Studies Quarterly, made a joke about wanting to remove the book’s insides so that “it could not reproduce” and then declared: “I DO encourage followers to steal Abigail Shrier’s book and burn it on a pyre.”

Lavery did in fact declare that her remarks were supposedly "ironic" when the backlash began, but really…it seems most implausible that the original tweet was meant as "a joke".

So, disappointing from the Times there. Why make out that the people leading the abuse against Shrier's book were just joking?

I wonder if it's significant that Pavia is reporting from New York, where trans rights seem to be taken much more seriously than over here.

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the authorities have ordered workers to offer their personal salaries to the party as a sign of loyalty, laborers who have been extorted out of their wages have no way to complain about the injustice.

You wonder how many of the products made in slave labour sweatshops like this textile factory in Jilin Province…

…end up in our high street shops. 

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persistent corruption; oppression of ethnic and religious minorities; daunting expenses incurred in monitoring, censoring, and indoctrinating 1.4 billion people in China; separation of the military, which is controlled by the party, from the people; and — particularly in the wake of the illness, death, and social and economic devastation wrought worldwide by the COVID-19 pandemic born in Wuhan — mounting international anger at the CCP’s contempt for human life, indifference to other nations’ well-being, and disregard for international norms and obligations.

Meeting the China challenge requires the United States to return to the fundamentals….

Well, good luck with that. 

South Korea's Chosun Ilbo, meanwhile, has picked out some notable points:

The U.S. State Department in a recent report published Tuesday accuses China of continuing to enable North Korea's nuclear arms development despite international sanctions.

The report, titled "The Elements of the China Challenge," warns, "While China has voted for all ten rounds of United Nations sanctions against North Korea, Beijing has watered down each resolution."

It "continues to aid the dictatorial regime in Pyongyang through the provision of food, oil and investment," it adds. "By reducing pressure on North Korea, China's uneven enforcement of the sanctions regime has enabled Pyongyang to develop its nuclear weapons program."

The report claims China has also helped, or connived with, Iran and Syria to develop weapons of mass destruction and missiles. "Despite Chinese commitments, Iran, North Korea and Syria continue to obtain [weapons of mass destruction] material and technology from Chinese entities while using Chinese territory as a transshipment point."

The report, which paints a gloomy picture of China's ambitions with a view to encouraging greater U.S. interventionism in Asia, says Beijing's ultimate goal is to "rule the world 'under heaven' through its uniquely refined culture and institutions." It insists, "In the face of the China challenge, the United States must secure freedom."

The United States is having enough trouble securing itself a new president, and even then I'm not convinced the 77-year-old Biden (sorry – 78 today) is the man for the job, but yes, absolutely…

on two cuts by a 21-year-old White boy from Cambridge by the name of Al Wilson. Al plays second guitar on Empire State Express and harp on Levee Camp Moan. Al never recorded before, but he has backed John Hurt, Skip James, Sleepy John Estes, Bukka White and many others. He is good, and the record will prove it."

He moved to LA thanks to John Fahey, another blues scholar as well as noted and eccentric guitar virtuoso:

During his time performing in Cambridge, Wilson met American guitarist John Fahey. From Fahey, he acquired the nickname "Blind Owl" owing to his extreme nearsightedness, roundish facial features and scholarly nature. In one instance when he was playing at a wedding, he laid his guitar on the wedding cake because he did not see it. As Canned Heat's drummer, Fito de la Parra, wrote in his book: "Without the glasses, Alan literally could not recognize the people he played with at two feet, that's how blind the 'Blind Owl' was." With Fahey's encouragement, Wilson moved with Fahey to Los Angeles with the aim of having Wilson assist Fahey with his UCLA master's thesis on Charley Patton. In Los Angeles Wilson met Bob Hite, a fellow blues enthusiast and record collector who later established Canned Heat with Wilson.

Wilson died – possibly suicide – from a barbiturate overdose:

On September 3, 1970, Wilson was found dead on a hillside behind bandmate Bob Hite's Topanga Canyon home; he was 27 years old. An autopsy identified his manner and cause of death as accidental acute barbiturate intoxication. Wilson reportedly had attempted suicide a few months earlier, attempting to drive his car off a freeway in Los Angeles. He was briefly hospitalized for significant depression, and was released after a few weeks. Although his death is sometimes reported as a suicide, this is not clearly established and he left no note. Wilson's death came just two weeks before the death of Jimi Hendrix, four weeks before the death of Janis Joplin, and ten months before the death of Jim Morrison, three artists who also died at the same age. Along with his talent and intellect, Wilson had a reputation for social awkwardness and introversion which may have been a symptom of his depression.

And so joined the 27 club.

Here's an Al Wilson memorial site.