Chinese leader Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden agreed on key steps to halt a precipitous downward slide in relations between the two superpowers on Monday during their first face-to-face meeting as heads of state.

In wide-ranging talks lasting 3 1/2 hours, they pledged to restart government dialogues on areas from climate change to food security, while encouraging expanding people-to-people ties and stressing that neither leader sought conflict.

“I look forward to working with you, Mr. President, to bring China-U.S. relations back to the track of healthy and stable growth to the benefit of our two countries and the world as a whole,” Mr. Xi said, calling for “elevating” the relationship as the two men opened bilateral talks ahead of the G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia.

Following the meeting, Mr. Biden said the blunt and straightforward discussion with Mr. Xi about both of their intentions and priorities would help prevent misunderstandings. “I absolutely believe there need not be a new cold war,” he said.

The revived pledges of U.S.-China cooperation mark a sharp and welcome break from the deepening rivalry between Beijing and Washington, as relations have sunk in recent years to arguably their most divisive state since President Richard Nixon’s historic trip to China in 1972. Indeed, both leaders alluded to a responsibility to the world to ensure China and the United States could work together. Still, fundamental differences remain that will bring intense, ongoing competition, rooted in part in the deeply divergent worldviews of Messrs. Xi and Biden. 

Bolstered by the performance of Democrats – and defeat of election deniers – in the U.S. midterms, Mr. Biden said the elections showed “there is a deep and unwavering commitment in America to preserving and protecting and defending democracy.” Yet according to Mr. Biden, Mr. Xi has told him repeatedly that autocracies will prevail over democracies in the current struggle between world governance systems. 

“Xi genuinely believes in the unique advantage of the Chinese system,” says Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Beijing. “He thinks Western democracy is going to cause greater and greater internal polarization, instability, and even chaos that fundamentally undermines America’s long-term competitiveness vis-à-vis China.” 

China under Xi Jinping

With Mr. Xi recently winning a norm-breaking third term as chief of China’s Communist Party and packing the government’s top leadership with his loyalists, this Marxist worldview will likely guide China’s approach to the U.S. for the coming decade, if not longer.

One of Mr. Xi’s goals in seeking to reduce tensions with the U.S. is to gain time for China to advance, says Dr. Zhao, who is also a visiting research scholar at Princeton University’s Science and Global Security Program.

Mr. Xi’s conviction that the decline of Western democracies is historically inevitable has emboldened him to embrace a highly ambitious agenda, to build China into a prosperous nation with a world-class military that will stand as a model for the developing world. But Beijing faces serious domestic challenges from an economic slowdown, exacerbated by Mr. Xi’s strict “zero-COVID” policies.

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

U.S. President Joe Biden holds a news conference following his meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Bali, Indonesia, Nov. 14, 2022. Mr. Biden told reporters that the United States and China "are going to compete vigorously, but I’m not looking for conflict. I’m looking to manage this competition responsibly."

Bruce Dickson, professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, says Mr. Xi has greatly strengthened the Communist Party’s controls over government, the economy, and society, while abandoning or reversing many reforms begun in 1978. 

“It’s pretty clear that the reform and opening era in China is for all intents and purposes over,” says Dr. Dickson, author of “The Party and the People.”

Mr. Xi also believes the U.S. and its allies are working to thwart China’s rise, a view that has fueled his drive to boost its self-reliance in food and other areas as a hedge against outside threats, all while developing high-tech industry and modernizing the military. 

Military buildup, and finding common ground

Inspecting a military joint command center last week in a camouflage uniform, Mr. Xi told officers “the world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century ... and uncertainty in our country’s security situation is increasing.” Therefore, he urged, “the entire army must focus all its energy on fighting wars, focus all work on fighting, speed up the improvement of its ability to win.”

Given the irreconcilable ideological perspectives of China and the U.S., “Mr. Xi believes there is a real risk of an eventual showdown ... [so] if China can demonstrate formidable power, that is the best deterrent against perceived American aggressiveness,” says Dr. Zhao.

At the Bali meeting, the two leaders did find some common ground while clarifying and reaffirming their positions on key points of tension such as Taiwan, a self-governing island claimed by China. Mr. Xi stressed that Taiwan “is at the very core of China’s core interests ... and the first red line that must not be crossed.”

Mr. Biden reiterated Washington’s “One China” policy and said he did not think China had any imminent plans to invade Taiwan. “I made it clear we want to see cross-strait issues peacefully resolved, so it never has to come to that,” he said.

The two leaders discussed Russia’s war with Ukraine, and Mr. Xi said he is “highly concerned” about the conflict and supports a resumption of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. 

Against the backdrop of Russia’s nuclear saber rattling, Mr. Biden said he and Mr. Xi “reaffirmed our shared belief ... that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is totally unacceptable.”

“We aren’t going to be able to work everything out. I am not suggesting this is ‘kumbaya,’” Mr. Biden told reporters after the meeting. “We are going to compete vigorously, but I’m not looking for conflict. I’m looking to manage this competition responsibly,” he said.

In this sense, Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi are on the same page, experts say, as Mr. Xi has long considered China as engaged in a systemic competition with the United States.

“We are not just engaged in a U.S.-China great power rivalry,” says Andrew Small, senior transatlantic fellow with the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and author of “No Limits: The Inside Story of China’s War With the West.” “This is now really a challenge of a rivalry between systems. The Chinese Communist Party has understood it in these terms for some time,” he said, and “the U.S. has started to wake up to the idea.”

Jim Urquhart/Reuters

Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, with his wife, Gabby Giffords, a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, declares victory in his reelection campaign against Republican challenger Blake Masters in the U.S. midterm elections, in Phoenix, Nov. 12, 2022.

Nearly one week after Election Day, the center of U.S. politics is arguably a tabulation location in downtown Phoenix surrounded by police cars, TV crews, and rows and rows of fencing.

After days of incremental ballot tallies, Democrats over the weekend clinched their hold on the U.S. Senate, with news organizations projecting that incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona had won. And in Nevada, they declared that Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto had defeated her Republican opponent.

As of this writing, poll workers here were still counting votes to determine the winner of the close Arizona governor’s race, as well as two still-uncalled U.S. House seats. Control of the House remains undecided, although trends in Arizona and in neighboring California, which has 11 uncalled races, suggest Republicans are on track to wind up with a slim majority. 

The delay has led many Republicans and Democrats alike to ask: What’s taking these Western states so long?

Arizona election officials point first and foremost to Maricopa County’s sheer size, as the fourth most populous county in the nation and its second-largest voting jurisdiction. The state’s long-standing propensity for absentee voting, which has been allowed without exceptions here for 30 years, also requires more verification on the back end. Indeed, they note that Maricopa has always been slow, averaging 12.5 days to post its final election results over the past eight elections. The prolonged count is only getting attention now because the races have been so close and the outcomes so critical. 

But this year’s delay was also compounded by a new factor: suspicions surrounding voting machines and ballots sent through the mail. With portions of the Republican Party propagating unfounded fraud claims and conspiracies after the 2020 election, many “hardcore Republican voters,” as GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake put it, “brought their [mail-in] ballot in on Election Day.” Election officials say the resulting spike in late drop-offs of early ballots, or “late earlies” as they call them, slowed the counting down significantly.

Jim Urquhart/Reuters

Staffers work to "cure" ballots, the process of contacting the voter to allow them to amend or correct issues with their ballot, for the U.S. midterm elections at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix, Nov. 13, 2022.

Ironically, the postponed results could fuel even more distrust among these same voters, potentially creating an opening for new conspiracy theories.

“Never in American history has any state ever counted all ballots on Election Day. It’s not possible – and nor do you want it to be,” says David Becker, director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research.

“But the amount of time that it takes to count ballots can be exacerbated,” he adds – particularly if campaigns actively encourage voters to wait until Election Day to vote while also eschewing machines, an approach Mr. Becker calls “baffling” and likely to create a “vicious cycle” of election fraud claims. 

Hand-delivered on Election Day

Headed into the 2022 midterms, many Americans were concerned that the country would diverge into post-election chaos. But so far, most of the Republican candidates who questioned the 2020 election have not challenged this year’s results.

A rise in split-ticket voting may have helped in that regard. In Nevada, for example, the fact that the GOP captured the governorship may have made it harder for Republican Senate candidate Adam Laxalt – who tried to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 win in that state – to dispute his loss to Senator Cortez Masto.

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” says Mr. Becker. “But we’re not out of the woods yet.”

In Arizona, Ms. Lake reiterated in several Fox News appearances this week that she is confident that she will win her race, even though analysts downgraded her chances of victory. While she has not called the results fraudulent, she has characterized her state’s handling of the election as a “laughingstock” and accused Maricopa’s election officials of deliberately waiting to count votes from Republican areas last. Bill Gates, the Republican chair of the county board of supervisors, called that claim “unfair,” explaining that Maricopa counts votes in the order they are received. 

In 2020, Maricopa had about 170,000 “late earlies” dropped off on Election Day. This year, the number was roughly 290,000. The county began tabulating those votes on Friday.

Ronda Churchill/Reuters

U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, is surrounded by supporters after winning her reelection by narrowly defeating Republican challenger Adam Laxalt in midterm elections, in Las Vegas, Nov. 13, 2022.

A similar dynamic caused the delay in Nevada’s tabulation. After expanding absentee voting in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Nevada Legislature passed a law in 2021 requiring every county clerk to send all active, registered voters a mail-in ballot before Election Day. In 2018, the last set of midterm elections, less than 10% of the state’s voters cast their ballots by mail or absentee. This year, more than half of them did.

Officials in California chalk up much of their delay to state-specific codes, such as a law that allows election departments to continue receiving any ballots that were postmarked by Election Day, for up to a week.

Sarah Ramsey, who runs the Pima County Republican Party’s Election Integrity Program in Arizona, trained hundreds of local Republicans to work as poll watchers and workers this year. She also ran a vote center in Pima County on Election Day, where she had 515 people vote in person and 370 people drop off mail-in ballots that day. 

“Some people got the message that voting on Election Day meant dropping off your [mail-in] ballot on Election Day,” says Ms. Ramsey. She explains the additional labor that’s required to count mail-in ballots. After they are processed through a machine that can open envelopes, a poll worker must compare the signature on the affidavit to the signature on the voter’s registration record.

It’s a process that those who work elections say has only gotten more difficult as Americans type more and handwrite less. 

“Most kids don’t even learn cursive now,” says Helen Purcell, who previously served as Maricopa County recorder for almost three decades. 

Allegations of “something nefarious” 

During an interview at a Phoenix coffee shop, a customer overhears Ms. Purcell talking about ballot “curing” (the process whereby voters can fix or verify something on their ballot) and interrupts to ask the former elections official a question. The woman says Maricopa County recently called her to say her signatures don’t match and that she would have to come in and confirm her identity. After Ms. Purcell explains how she can make sure her ballot gets counted, the woman thanks her and leaves the shop. 

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Helen Purcell, who served as one of Maricopa County's top election officials for almost three decades, stands outside a coffee shop in Phoenix, Nov. 11, 2022.

“There’s so much that goes into an election that people just don’t realize,” says Ms. Purcell. 

A Republican, Ms. Purcell says she’s “not happy” with her party right now. She recently attended a local Republican women’s lunch and found herself explaining to fellow attendees how elections work and how rare instances of fraud actually are. She gets particularly frustrated hearing false claims about the glitch that occurred here on Election Day, when vote tabulators were unable to read ballots for several hours at about 30% of Maricopa’s vote centers. 

Election officials have since confirmed the problem was a result of the toner on the ballot printers not being dark enough. Affected voters were able to deposit their ballot in a drop box to be tallied later by a bipartisan team – a batch of roughly 17,000 ballots that has been referred to as “Box 3.”

Mr. Gates, one of Maricopa’s two top election officials, has tried to reassure the public in daily press conferences that the incident was an honest mistake. But in a county that was a primary focus of the Trump campaign’s election fraud claims in 2020, conspiracy theories abound.

“I’m sitting here right now answering emails [alleging that] something nefarious is going on with the tabulation,” says Shelley Kais, chair of the Pima County Republican Party in Arizona. “They’ve already gone from ‘It’s taking too long’ [to] ‘There’s fraud.’”

Ms. Kais emphasizes that she does not think there was any fraud. But going forward, she and other Republican officials agree, the GOP probably needs to rethink its messaging around voting.

Some suggest they also might want to change the laws. Many observers have been comparing Arizona’s process unfavorably to that of Florida, a populous state with plenty of mail-in voting that was able to determine its election results on Election Day. Florida closes its early voting the weekend before Election Day, and officials there are allowed to start tabulating the early ballots as soon as they come in. 

“We’ve already got a bill drafted that you have to drop off ballots by Friday 5 p.m. before [Election Day],” says Gina Swoboda, vice chair of the Arizona Republican Party and “election integrity” coordinator for the Lake campaign.

Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

Israeli ultranationalist lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir (center) arrives at the President's Residence for consultations on Israel's next government with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, in Jerusalem Nov. 10, 2022.

In the context of the Israeli president’s mostly ceremonial role, which is not supposed to drift into partisan politics, Isaac Herzog’s remarks Thursday to Itamar Ben-Gvir, head of the Jewish Power faction of the Religious Zionism party, bordered on a lecture.

The two were meeting as part of the post-election procedure in Israel, wherein the president confers with leaders of incoming parliamentary factions before choosing who is given the mandate to form the next government.

After the recent general election, it is already well known, that person will again be the long-serving Benjamin Netanyahu, who has spent the last 16 months as leader of the opposition.

President Herzog was blunt with Mr. Ben-Gvir, who has been convicted of incitement and as a lawyer has defended extremist settlers charged with violence against Palestinians.

“There is a certain image of you and your party that causes concern in many places regarding the treatment of Arabs and Muslims in our country,” he told Mr. Ben-Gvir. “In the end there is a country to manage; it is Jewish-democratic, egalitarian, and believes in both human and civil rights.”

Mr. Ben-Gvir protested his innocence, but his next stop after the President’s Residence did nothing to dispel the concerns: a visit to a memorial ceremony honoring the late Meir Kahane, an anti-Arab Jewish ideologue whose party was once outlawed in Israel for its racist invective.

Netanyahu’s path back

With the help now of Religious Zionism and two ultra-Orthodox parties, Mr. Netanyahu, leader of the Likud party, is set for a dramatic return to power at the helm of a far-right government. This “Netanyahu bloc” secured a four-seat majority in the early November ballot, the country’s fifth election in under four years.

The cabinet posts and coalition policy agenda are still to be negotiated, but Religious Zionism is already setting the tone: Jewish supremacism and religious piety are taking precedence over Israel’s more liberal and pluralistic traditions.

In the new government’s crosshairs are also the independence of Israel’s Supreme Court and other legal institutions, which if undermined, analysts contend, could remove any checks on the new government

Tsafrir Abayov/AP

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, react to parliamentary election results at his Likud party's headquarters in Jerusalem, Nov. 2, 2022.

The seeds of Mr. Netanyahu’s comeback were planted over a year ago as he desperately tried to cling to power. Following the previous election in March 2021, Mr. Netanyahu made every effort to secure the support of an Arab-Israeli Islamist party for his next governing coalition. The move was scuttled by his purported partners in Religious Zionism, an alliance of Jewish ultranationalist factions that he had just personally engineered.

Denouncing any effort to include an Arab-Israeli party in a coalition, Religious Zionism head Bezalel Smotrich said he would “not lend a hand to the suicide of the Right and the State of Israel” in seating a government “dependent on the support of anti-Zionist terror supporters [who] make all of us their hostages.”

The anti-Netanyahu camp – made up of centrist, leftist, and some nationalist parties – then seized the opportunity to form its own coalition with the Arab party, Ra’am.

“Netanyahu should have known better than to think he could control these extremists,” one official from this camp said at the time. 

With the ascent of a broad government headed by Naftali Bennett, a solidly right-wing pro-settlement leader who had long been part of Mr. Netanyahu’s bloc, the deposed prime minister quickly pivoted to embrace the invective of the far-right.

In speeches and social media campaigns and at Likud-organized rallies, Mr. Netanyahu and his supporters amplified the message that the serving Israeli government was “illegitimate,” “weak and leftist,” and dependent on “Muslim Brothers” and “terrorist supporters.”

The dog-whistles and populism resonated. 

“Our country was kidnapped in an illegal way,” said Yossi Bezalel, a right-wing demonstrator in Jerusalem in June 2021. “We’re going to take our country back and defend our honor.” At a protest in Tel Aviv a few months later, ultranationalists demanded a “Jewish government for the Jewish State.” And this year, at a provocative march near Jerusalem’s Old City, Mr. Ben-Gvir termed the Israeli government a “Hamas government,” referring to the Palestinian militant group.

Mr. Netanyahu and the far-right rode this wave of incitement to election victory.

This “rhetoric of religious-nationalist supremacy ... puts the Jew above any human value [and] doesn’t give any humanist association to something that is not Jewish,” says Mohammad Darawshe, an expert on Jewish-Arab relations in Israel. “And now they’re in power.”

Helping Mr. Netanyahu’s alliance were lingering tensions from widespread intercommunal riots in mixed Jewish-Arab cities in May 2021, during a round of fighting in Gaza. The unrest, at the tail end of Mr. Netanyahu’s last term, was fueled in part by the presence of Mr. Ben-Gvir and extremist Jewish gangs at flashpoints in East Jerusalem and central Israel.

In from the fringe

Until recently, Mr. Ben-Gvir and his Jewish Power faction were viewed as fringe players in national politics. Successive efforts to win a seat in parliament failed, until Mr. Netanyahu began brokering far-right alliances to maximize their vote share and bolster his own electoral prospects.

“Netanyahu was very dominant in the design of the extreme right in Israel,” says Professor Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. “He gave legitimacy to them politically and publicly. ... He created this phenomenon.”

Today, Jewish Power’s platform calls for the “emigration” of “Israel’s enemies” to their “countries of origin”; settlement construction on the entirety of the Land of Israel, including all of the West Bank; the embedding of “Hebrew Law” in the country’s legal system; and the reclaiming of “sovereignty and ownership” over Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.

“We do not want to lose the Jewish State neither in war, nor in peace, nor through Western democracy,” the platform reads.

Oren Ziv/AP

Supporters of Israeli far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir, head of the Jewish Power faction of the Religious Zionism party, celebrates after exit poll results are announced, at party headquarters in Jerusalem, Nov. 1, 2022.

“Jewish supremacy and power are their own terms, and it describes them well,” Professor Talshir adds. “For them Jewish nationhood supersedes the State of Israel.”

Mr. Ben-Gvir also played on real fears of growing crime and violence in Israel’s southern Negev and northern Galilee regions – mainly from Arab organized crime families – to burnish himself as the candidate that can “restore governance” and “personal security” to these and other areas. 

Much of Religious Zionism’s surge in support, pollsters maintain, came from Jewish Israelis drawn to Mr. Ben-Gvir’s “law and order” platform. He again promised supporters recently that he would “untie the hands of our soldiers and police officers,” including loosening the rules for the use of live fire against Palestinians.

He is now demanding, and may likely get, the Internal Security ministry in the next Netanyahu government – a cabinet post with responsibility for the National Police.

“There will be a lot of needless collisions [between Jews and Arabs], which will be enflamed on purpose by Ben-Gvir even by his mere presence at specific events,” Mr. Darawshe predicts. “Any senior police official that wants to get ahead will break rightward in order to appease the minister.”

Status of the judiciary

Since his electoral victory in early November, Mr. Netanyahu in his few public remarks has attempted to convey a message of calm and unity to both the Israeli public and the international community.

Yet analysts maintain that he is dependent on Religious Zionism not only to form his next government but also to pass a sweeping “judicial reform” agenda that could see the independence of the Supreme Court, attorney general, and other legal institutions quashed.

“The entire system, all the authority of the Supreme Court, the separation of powers between the government branches, the checks and balances – there’s no guarantee of anything here, because there’s no constitution. You just need 61 votes [in parliament, out of 120 seats],” says Dr. Amir Fuchs, a senior researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

The Israeli Right has long viewed the country’s judges and legal officials as overly activist. The judiciary has often struck down legislation and government decisions deemed illegal – including on issues like settlement construction in the West Bank, the forced deportation of African economic migrants, or the civil rights of Arab Israelis.

Mr. Netanyahu may use the above “reforms” to effectively halt his ongoing corruption trial for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, analysts say.

“Religious Zionism has Netanyahu right where they want him. He needs them,” says Professor Talshir. “He may think he can control them, but they control him. The ideological engine of this government is them, not him.”

There have been some efforts to make the ideology more palatable. On Nov. 7, Mr. Ben-Gvir penned a full-page op-ed in the rightwing Israel Hayom addressed to “my brothers on the left.”

“I’ve matured, I’ve become more moderate and I’ve come to understand life is more complicated,” he wrote. “All of us need personal security. … And yes, the Arab citizens of Israel are also entitled to protection and to feeling safe.”

Yet later that same day, he tweeted a picture of a prominent Arab Israeli parliamentarian at the Tel Aviv airport heading to make a flight. “It’s about time! May we be blessed with such good news only and that they never come back here,” he wrote.

India’s suicide data is massively underreported, and yet the country accounts for the highest number of suicide deaths in the world. When the National Crime Records Bureau recently released its 2021 data, two things stood out – the suicide rate was at an all-time high, and 1 of every 4 persons who died by suicide was a daily wage earner. 

Experts say the situation is “alarming,” but for those working in the labor sector, “it did not come as a surprise,” says Divya Varma, who leads knowledge and policy advocacy at Aajeevika Bureau, a nonprofit working with migrant worker communities. It was a stark reminder of the continued social, economic, and mental toll of COVID-19 on marginalized groups. 

“The trauma that we saw on the ground, it got manifested in numbers,” she adds.

What are key takeaways from the new data? 

Contrary to predictions, most countries did not experience a significant uptick in suicide deaths during COVID-19. India, however, recorded 164,033 deaths by suicide in 2021, an increase of more than 7% from 2020, which saw a 10% jump from the year before. 

“Illness” and “family problems” were cited as the main drivers of suicide deaths last year. But when we look at the data by other parameters – high suicide deaths among middle-aged men, those who are self-employed, and daily wage earners – we may actually be seeing the results of economic pressure “that affects an individual at all levels and has an impact on their interpersonal relationships,” says Dr. Lakshmi Vijayakumar, a psychiatrist and founder of the Chennai-based suicide prevention nonprofit SNEHA.

India has been facing a massive job and unemployment crisis. For many at the bottom rung of the increasingly informal workforce, COVID-19 served as a tipping point, says Ms. Varma. Denial of fair wages, mounting debt, and lack of means for redress left workers deeply stressed and likely contributed to the increase in suicides, she adds.

At the same time, the suicide rate among women and girls in India remains twice the global rate, with housewives being the profession most affected after daily wage earners.

How has the government responded to the suicide crisis?

India has been hailed in recent years for attempting to shift the government’s role in suicide prevention from one of punishment to support, but barriers to progress remain. The Mental Healthcare Act in 2017 largely decriminalized suicide attempts, yet India’s British-era penal code still treats suicide as a crime, and Dr. Vijayakumar says such legal anomalies lead to continued harassment and stigma for survivors. 

The act also called for the availability of mental health services in every district, but there has been a severe lack of implementation, says Priti Sridhar, chief executive officer at Mariwala Health Initiative, a mental health funding and advocacy organization. 

Yet for a crisis of the magnitude in India, providing mental health services may not be enough. 

A growing amount of research highlights the need to veer away from looking at suicide through the lens of individual health and to acknowledge it as a broader societal issue, Ms. Sridhar says. 

How can India better support vulnerable communities?  

Dr. Vijayakumar – who in 2018 was part of a government task force that put together a national suicide prevention strategy, which has yet to be implemented – says India’s suicide crisis cannot be addressed by the health department alone. It requires involvement from multiple sectors, “and that can only be possible if we have a strong coordinating body or a national strategy,” she adds. 

Until then, some initiatives have sought to address the challenges workers face. Aajeevika Bureau and Working People’s Charter launched India Labourline, a national hotline that helps settle wage disputes and address rights violations by mediating with employers or contractors on workers’ behalf. An intervention model like this can be easily scaled with government support, say experts. 

Some say suicide prevention is achievable without requiring huge financial and other resource investments. It can entail, for instance, training India’s existing network of community workers to identify and prevent suicides in the last mile. 

“Most people who are suicidal are ambivalent,” says Dr. Vijayakumar. “Their wish to live and their wish to die is like a seesaw battle for them. So at that moment if some support is given, many suicides can be prevented.”

Gone are the days of hours at home during the pandemic in which legions of people discovered the joys of making sourdough rounds. Rush-hour traffic is officially back and so is the pressure to figure out weeknight dinners on the fly. But all need not be lost to takeout defaults from the Before Times. Here is a roundup of newly released cookbooks focused on helping you return to life in the fast lane with simple cooking hacks. You might need to think beyond the everyday and seek out ingredients like grapeseed oil, garam masala, fresh ginger, and turmeric. But the fresh restart in the kitchen will be worth the effort. 

Creative riffs on dinner classics

If you have a steady rotation of pasta, tacos, burgers, and meatballs in your house for weeknight meals, Australian cookbook author Donna Hay has some tricks to liven up the routine. In “The Fast Five,” Hay offers five riffs on each dinner classic. For example, settle a jeweled spoonful of caramelized balsamic onion onto a nest of spaghetti; fill warm flour tortillas with spiced pork and pineapple and top with feta and thinly sliced green chili. Amp up burger night with kimchi beef patties finished with spicy mayo. And don’t settle for ordinary fries with that: Try crunchy potato rosti, salt-and-vinegar smashed potatoes, or herbed hash browns. Hay offers plenty of vegetable-first dishes and delectable flourless desserts without saying “vegetarian” or “gluten-free.”

The food styling and photography is so gorgeous in “The Fast Five” that even reluctant cooks will want to venture outside their comfort zones. (If you can make your dishes look this appealing, no one at your dinner table should opt for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead.) For those who like to watch short recipe videos, QR codes are sprinkled throughout the cookbook that take readers to YouTube. In 90 seconds or less, Hay smiles her way through the demonstrations – from her stylish kitchen – with just the right touch to make featured dishes look easy and fast to make. 

Menu plans for busy families

Dini Klein had a revelation in the middle of her thriving catering business. She was so busy, some nights her young family was eating cereal for dinner. That wasn’t going to work. So she put pen to paper to figure out a system that would help her plan, shop, and prepare family menus for the week. The result is “Prep + Rally: An Hour of Prep, A Week of Delicious Meals,” a survival guide for parents who want to make sure their family is being fed without resorting to buttered noodles every night. As a mom to three young kids, Klein offers an approach she lives by. All the shopping is done on one day, and all the meal prep the next. When the busy week gets underway, just heat up the prepared food in the oven, and mix and match to make four meals. Each menu comes with a shopping list, kid-friendly substitutions, and vegetarian options. 

“Prep + Rally” offers menu plans for 10 weeks’ worth of meals, plus fresh approaches to leftovers and quick, last-minute dishes like veggie frittata and salami- and egg-fried rice. Klein professes to not be much of a baker, but she offers a few low-fuss desserts and snacks such as mango, pineapple, and dates blended with ice for a quick smoothie treat topped with a few toasted coconut flakes. There are dishes to satisfy grown-ups (BBQ-Rubbed Chicken with Chili-Spiced Sweet Potatoes and Zucchini) and the young at heart (tuna casserole topped with potato tots). 

Karen Norris/Staff

Inspiration from the pantry

Meal plans are a helpful strategy for solving the daily dinner dilemma, but there’s freedom to be found when rummaging through the pantry and fridge and making something up on the fly. And that doesn’t have to mean penne pasta and marinara sauce (again). Christopher Kimball and his Milk Street team strive to build confidence with “Cook What You Have: Make a Meal Out of Almost Anything,” their latest how-to for home cooks. Kimball starts from the premise that your fridge and pantry are decently full. Do you have tuna and eggs on hand? Try deviled eggs with tuna, olives, and capers. Is there shrimp in the freezer? Stir up Spanish-style shrimp with garlic and olive oil. Are there cans of beans collecting dust on a basement shelf? Make a chickpea and carrot curry. You get the gist.

But if your pantry is sparse or just plain uninspired, the Milk Street team offers its top “must haves” to liven things up. If your cooking doesn’t regularly look outward to world cuisines, this is an opportunity to get new condiments and learn how to use them. For example, fish sauce, miso, kimchi, and tahini add what’s called umami (savoriness), depth, and richness to any dish – even desserts. Make friends with these strangers if you haven’t already. Most of the recipes in “Cook What You Have” can be made in 40 minutes or less. 

Karen Norris/Staff

One-pot wonders

If you are striving to incorporate more vegetables into your meals, or cut out meat and dairy altogether, British cookbook author Alan Rosenthal offers 60 dishes with world cuisine flavors in “Foolproof Veggie One-Pot: 60 Vibrant and Easy-going Vegetarian Dishes” that can be cooked in one pan on the hob (stovetop) or in the oven. From pastas to pilafs, stews to stir-fries, and even desserts, Rosenthal brings his culinary creativity to showcase vegetables as the main event. 

Rosenthal has taught one-pot cooking classes for years; this is his fourth such cookbook, and he is precise and pedantic in his approaches and measurements. So pay attention. Making vegetables look appetizing after being cooked, braised, or sautéed is no easy feat, and Rosenthal emphasizes presentation alongside complex flavors. For instance, onion halves caramelized into a deep purple settled against the greens of cavolo nero (kale) amid pale Stilton (blue cheese) and accented with tawny cashews make a dish almost too pretty to eat. Some recipes may require more time than opening a can of soup (lots of chopping, grating, and slicing) but the reward of warm fresh vegetables accented by vibrant flavors is worth it. Rosenthal doesn’t cut corners, but he will offer shortcuts like using frozen vegetables in a succotash of sweet potato, edamame, and corn. Autumn into winter is the perfect time to spend with these recipes. 

Don’t skip dessert

This is the second time Molly Gilbert, a trained professional chef and pastry chef, has elevated the humble sheet pan. Her “Sheet Pan Suppers” helped launch a food trend for quick, easy dinners a decade ago, and now she is turning her attention to the best meal of the day: dessert.

A beautifully decorated cake is a marvel, but let’s be honest. Few of us have the time or patience to perfect the skills needed to make culinary masterpieces ourselves. Enter Gilbert’s “Sheet Pan Sweets: Simple, Streamlined Dessert Recipes.”  

Armed with just a rimmed sheet pan, Gilbert has simplified 82 recipes for cakes, bars, cookies, pies, and breads. She has honed a winning trifecta of high-volume plus quick baking and cooling times to deliver a different dessert for almost every night of the week. She explains the benefits of using a baking sheet over a deep baking pan and why a jellyroll pan is not a sheet pan. 

So the next time your third grader announces she needs a dessert to feed 28 in 12 hours, you are set with All-the-Cereal Treats. Just learned 40 people have RSVP’d to your Friendsgiving potluck and only one person is bringing dessert? Pumpkin Pie Bars will have you covered. 

It’s not all flatness either. Gilbert offers careful instructions for cake rolls and even how to make a layer cake with one pan. Dig in! You deserve it.

Reuters

Refugees who have fled fighting in Myanmar have settled temporarily near the Moei River in Mae Sot, Thailand.

Half of Southeast Asia’s nations have authoritarian regimes, which made it a welcome surprise last Friday when the region’s grouping of 10 countries decided to open talks with the pro-democracy opposition in war-ravaged Myanmar.

This bold step will not only help drain legitimacy from the country’s ruling but isolated military, but also send a message of the need for political inclusion, as Indonesian President Joko Widodo put it. “We must not allow the situation in Myanmar to define [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations],” said the leader of ASEAN’s most populous country.

ASEAN’s decision to engage the pro-democracy National Unity Government – a group run by elected leaders ousted in a 2021 military coup – runs counter to the regional body’s policy of not interfering in each other’s domestic affairs. But many ASEAN leaders have become disgusted with the military’s massacres, executions, and bombings of civilians in Myanmar – actions supported by Russian-provided weapons with tacit support from China.

The civil war in Myanmar, in other words, has become a threat to ASEAN’s tradition of creating a region of stability that provides low-key – and inclusive – diplomacy in coping with Asia’s dangerous fault lines.

After the coup against the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February last year, ASEAN did set a five-point plan for the military to end its scorched-earth tactics against a national uprising and restore democracy. But the regime under coup leader Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing has only increased its attacks even as the National Unity Government’s forces have set up an alternative “shadow” government and worked closely with Myanmar’s suppressed ethnic minorities.

Myanmar’s economy is near collapse and, with the military now only in control of an estimated 20% of the country, ASEAN has seen how much the people of Myanmar want their democracy back – much like the world has seen Ukrainians fight for their freedom.

Despite the bloc’s authoritarian members, its neighborly move to reach out to Myanmar’s democratic forces sets a model of inclusion for both the country and the region.