As COVID-19 cases rise in China, even by small numbers, the government continues to take drastic measures to contain the outbreaks. Measures include a hamster cull in Hong Kong, and thousands stuck in shopping malls for 48-hour quarantines in Shanghai. And US State Department officials traveled to Sudan this week to help mediate the ongoing political crisis in Sudan following the military coup in October. They condemned the use of “disproportionate” force against protesters. Plus, more than 700 years ago, the poet and Sufi mystic Rumi started spinning as a form of meditation. The practice of his modern descendants, known as the “whirling dervishes,” is misunderstood and between commercialism and tradition, even in Konya, where it began.