The Weekly Lift - September 15, 2022

The news were dominated this past week by the death of Queen Elizabeth II of course. Regardless of one's opinion about the British monarchy, it is hard to deny that she had been the most constant historical figure in the world for the last 70 years. Nine out of ten living humans were born after she became Queen in 1952. Astounding.

In my view, one of the most important pieces of news this week is the turn of events in Ukraine, with the country regaining control over large swaths of its territory. This development has brought to light the weaknesses of the Russian army but also the seemingly rising technological superiority of Ukrainian forces, thanks in part to the billions of dollars provided by the United States and other Western countries, mostly in military equipment.

War should not be associated with any positivity or optimism. There is no winner in a conflict, as casualties mount and lives are destroyed. However, could a shift in the balance of power between Russia and Ukraine lead to truce or perhaps even introduce peace negotiations as a viable next step? The Weekly Lift hopes so!

This week's selection of positive headlines and articles*:

Ukraine: In Kiev, War And Rapprochement With The European Union Strengthen Democratic Momentum

Le Monde (France) reports that "at the Kiev Opera, we play?Rigoletto, by Verdi. Life has regained its rights in the Ukrainian capital and, if not for the unusual number of trellis pedestrians, concrete blocks and frieze horses placed in certain strategic locations, it could almost be ignored that the brutal and deadly war is raging on the east and south fronts, a few hundred kilometers away.

However, another offensive, even less visible, is underway in Kiev. It is deployed in a theater familiar to the heirs of the post-Soviet space: that of the rule of law and the fight against corruption. The shock of the Russian aggression of February 24 and the positive dynamic of the prospect of Ukraine's accession to the European Union, opened in June, gave new impetus to democracy activists. Under this double catalytic effect, they are multiplying their efforts to try to make up for the time lost in these three messy decades of Ukraine's independence.

Can democracy progress in times of war? This is at first glance counterintuitive, but Ukraine may well surprise on this field as well. Sergiy Solodkyy, of the local think tank New Europe Center, summarizes three waves of disappointed hopes:?"After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the democratic transformation was captured by the nomenklatura and the post-Soviet mafia.

In 2004, the "orange revolution" failed to bring down the power of the oligarchs and President Viktor Yushchenko was incorporated into the system.?In 2014, with the Maidan revolution, Sergiy Solodkyy really believed that, this time, everything would change,?"but Vladimir Putin understood it too".?Today, he says, "February 24 opened a fourth wave of hope - perhaps the last".

Because now, we often hear in Kiev,?"we no longer have the right to fail".?The tribute already paid in human lives is too heavy.?"People who fight at the front ask us: are you moving forward? Because we, when we come back, will want to see results,"?reports Roman Maselko, a lawyer very committed to the fight against corruption who has just been appointed by Parliament a member of the Superior Council of Justice, the Ukrainian equivalent of the Superior Council of the Judiciary in France.

This body is crucial for the reform of the judicial system because it appoints judges, an essential link - and so far a weak link - to clean up corruption.?"We are fighting to recover our territory but also to change the system,"?continues Roman Maselko. We don't want to be like Russia, we want to be Europe.The war, he says, accelerated this effort:?"A year ago, I never hoped to be appointed to this position.”

Other unexpected steps have been overcome in recent times. The appointment of the special prosecutor against corruption had been blocked for two years, because the selected candidate was not the favorite of the presidency. But when this point was included by the European Commission in the conditions put to the examination of Ukraine's candidacy for the EU, the situation suddenly unblocked and Parliament confirmed the selected prosecutor.

A new method is proving its worth: the increased vigilance of civil society associations, which consider that war imposes this duty on them and intervene directly with government bodies, combined with pressure from Western countries. The Twitter account of G7 country representatives (@G7AmbReformUA), who provide considerable financial assistance to Ukraine, serves as a warning channel. On September 5, when they heard dubious maneuvers in Parliament to change the procedure for selecting the leaders of anti-corruption institutions,?they tweeted their "concern".?The bill has been amended.

Tetiana Shevtchouk, one of the leaders of the NGO Anticorruption Action Center, welcomes this informal coordination all the more as the martial law in force necessarily limits civic activism. The current democratic momentum, she notes,?"is not comparable to Maidan, who was a mass movement. At the moment, many people are at the front, we are acting in a targeted way."?But the requirement is there: everyone is aware of the challenge that awaits Ukrainian officials when the time for reconstruction comes.

The enormity of the sums that will have to be committed, in particular by the European Union and the United States, will not be able to accommodate the country's legendary corruption. The system must be reformed before.?"Membership to the Union must be used not as a means of reconstruction, but as a vehicle for transformation,"?pleads Pavlo Klimkine, Minister of Foreign Affairs under the presidency of Petro Poroshenko.

Mr. Poroshenko, precisely, was one of the distinguished absentees of the Yalta European Strategy conference, organized on 9 and 10 September in Kiev under these particular conditions by Viktor Pintchuk, oligarch and philanthropist, and opened by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Also absent, the oligarchs who, in the other years, mingled with the political elites gathered for this conference.

On Saturday, between two debates in the basement of a large hotel in Kiev protected by the army, some speculated about a weakening of the oligarchs, whose capital was very damaged by the war - literally and figuratively. What will the Ukrainian political scene look like after the war? For the time being, the unit holds firm, existential.?"Because otherwise, we disappear,"?says journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk.?"An unprecedented unit,"?says academic Oleksiy Haran.

Unity does not exclude criticism, provided that it does not focus on war and the way it is conducted. The control, in particular, of information on public television is considered excessive by many. Questions were also raised about the weakness of some lines of defense as Russian President Vladimir Putin massacred his forces along the border this winter. But, by mutual agreement, these criticisms have been muted.?

"We have a box, with a "After the War" label, we put our questions and criticisms on it and lock it. When the war is over, we will open it and then all it will come out,"?smiles Svitlana Zalichtchouk, who entered Parliament after Maidan and then went through various phases of hope and disenchantment.

In any case, the Ukrainian political landscape should undergo a profound renewal, qualitative and generational. The war brings out new faces, mayors, governors, soldiers. MR. Putin will then have doubledly failed: not only will Ukraine have proven once and for all that it is indeed a nation, but, even worse, that this nation is capable of building a democratic state."

International Relations: Two Years After Deadly Fistfights, India and China Pull Back From Border

The New York Times (US) reports that "their soldiers have fought with fists, rocks and wooden clubs along a disputed frontier high in the Himalayas. Both India and China have said?they don't want a war, but the brawls led them to move thousands of soldiers to inhospitable terrain.

Now, the two nuclear-armed neighbors appear to be moving toward de-escalation after a conflict that endangered regional stability, with officials from both sides agreeing to pull back soldiers from friction points along their disputed border in the Ladakh region.

“The Indian and Chinese troops in the area of Gogra-Hot Springs have begun to disengage in a coordinated and planned way, which is conducive to the peace and tranquility in the border areas,” India’s Defense Ministry said on Thursday in a statement that the Chinese government also issued in almost identical form.

The border tensions escalated after India unilaterally stripped its part of the disputed?Kashmir region for its semiautonomous status in August 2019. China, which also controls a portion of Kashmir, started a troop buildup along its side of the border with Ladakh, which had been part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir before New Delhi split the region. (Pakistan also controls part of Kashmir.)

Beijing called India’s decision to cement its control over Kashmir “illegal and invalid.” India responded by saying it was an internal matter. Months later, in June 2020, Indian and Chinese?soldiers squared off after China’s military moved tens of thousands of troops and artillery to disputed areas, including the strategic Galwan Valley. Fighting between the two sides left 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese troops dead in the worst border clash between the two nations since 1967.

Not a single shot was fired, following a longstanding code against using firearms, but the soldiers went at each other with fists, some possibly studded with nails or wrapped in barbed wire.

Since a major war in 1962, China and India have largely contained disputes through talks and treaties. Over the decades, there have been flare-ups along the 2,100-mile frontier between the two countries, which is referred to as the Line of Actual Control and is not well defined. But they did not result in a major escalation. After that changed dramatically two years ago, the two sides looked to ease tensions, holding 16 rounds of commander-level talks, the last one in July.

After the announcement of the pullback in Gogra-Hot Springs, India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement on Friday that “the two sides have agreed to cease forward deployments in this area in a phased, coordinated and verified manner, resulting in the return of the troops of both sides to their respective areas.”

Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a regular briefing on Friday afternoon: “China firmly safeguards its sovereignty and territorial integrity. This position has not changed in any way. It is very firm.” She added: “China is committed to resolving differences through dialogue and consultation. This is why we have been in communication with India on border issues through diplomatic and military channels.”

Deependra Singh Hooda, a retired lieutenant general who led India’s Northern Command, which covers Kashmir and part of the Chinese border, warned that the announcement had not completely ended the conflict. He said that there were places where Chinese soldiers remained in place, and that if Indian soldiers were stopped from patrolling their own areas, that implied those areas were under the control of China.

Still, “this is a positive development,” Mr. Hooda said, adding that while the full nature of the agreement was unclear, “at least troops have gotten separated.”

The announcement came a week before the leaders of India and China will attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. It will be the first time that Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and Xi Jinping, China’s leader, will be under one roof since the deadly clash.

Both Mr. Xi and Mr. Modi increasingly risked allowing the conflict to spin out of control as they took increasingly assertive postures, moving thousands of troops into the disputed region. Indian politicians, including Mr. Modi, have made several visits to the Ladakh region. During one, Mr. Modi donned a military jacket to address soldiers.

As the standoff has grown, India has increased its focus on Ladakh,?spending millions of dollars to build roads along its side of the Chinese border, particularly in areas where its positioning was weak and China had a terrain advantage.

Among the remaining contention points between the two armies is an eastern region called the Depsang Plains. Military analysts said that the Chinese Army was not allowing Indian troops to patrol in that area, even though they have done so for decades. While India’s military is already stretched thin, said Saurav Jha, editor in chief of the Delhi Defense Review, it still needs to keep up a permanent patrol to deter China.

Konchok Stanzin, a local politician from eastern Ladakh, said the announcement would ease worries among people in the region. But local shepherds have lost grazing areas as the land has become buffer zones, he said.

“If there is complete disengagement, people will feel good about it,” he said. “Peace is important for emotional well-being of the people.”

Global Health: In A Nod To JFK, Biden Pushing ‘Moonshot’ To Fight Cancer

The Globe and Mail (Canada) reports that "President Joe Biden is set to channel John F. Kennedy on the 60th anniversary of JFK’s moonshot speech, highlighting Biden administration efforts aimed at “ending cancer as we know it.”

The president was travelling to Boston on Monday to draw attention to a new federally backed study that seeks evidence for using blood tests to screen against multiple cancers – a potential game-changer in diagnostic testing to dramatically improve early detection of cancers. He also planned other announcements meant to better the lives of those suffering from cancer.

His speech at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum comes as Biden seeks to rally the nation around developing treatments and therapeutics for the pervasive diseases that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rank as the second-highest killer of people in the U.S. after heart disease. Biden hopes to move the U.S. closer to the goal he set in February of cutting U.S. cancer fatalities by 50% over the next 25 years and to dramatically improve the lives of caregivers and those suffering from cancer.

Danielle Carnival, the White House cancer moonshot coordinator, told The Associated Press that the administration sees huge potential in the commencement of the blood diagnostic study on identifying and treating cancers.

“One of the most promising technologies has been the development of blood tests that offer the promise of detecting multiple cancers in a single blood test and really imagining the impact that could have on our ability to detect cancer early and in a more equitable way,” Carnival said. “We think the best way to get us to the place where those are realized is to really test out the technologies we have today and see what works and what really has an impact on extending lives.”

In 2022, the American Cancer Society estimates, 1.9 million new cancer cases will be diagnosed and 609,360 people will die of cancer diseases. The issue is personal to Biden, who lost his adult son Beau in 2015 to brain cancer. After Beau’s death, Congress passed the 21st Century Cures Act, which dedicated $1.8 billion over seven years for cancer research and was signed into law in 2016 by President Barack Obama.

Obama designated Biden, then vice president, to run “mission control” on directing the cancer funds as a recognition of Biden’s grief as a parent and desire to do something about it. Biden wrote in his memoir “Promise Me, Dad” that he chose not to run for president in 2016 primarily because of Beau’s death.

Despite Biden’s attempts to hark back to Kennedy and his space program, the current initiative lacks that same level of budgetary support. The Apollo program garnered massive public investment – more than $20 billion, or more than $220 billion in 2022 dollars adjusted for inflation. Biden’s “moonshot” effort is far more modest and reliant on private sector investment.

Still, Biden has tried to maintain momentum for investments in public health research, including championing the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, modelled after similar research and development initiatives benefiting the Pentagon and intelligence community.

On Monday, Biden announced Dr. Renee Wegrzyn as the inaugural director of ARPA-H, which has been given the task of studying treatments and potential cures for cancers, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and other diseases. He also announced a new National Cancer Institute scholars’ program to provide resources to early-career scientists studying treatments and cures for cancer.

In Boston, Biden also spoke at Logan International Airport to highlight spending from last year’s bipartisan infrastructure law. “We risk losing our edge as a nation to China, and the rest of the world is catching up,” he said. “That stops now, with investments like we’re celebrating here today.” Biden is scheduled to speak later in the day at a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee.

Experts agree it’s far too early to say whether these new blood tests for finding cancer in healthy people will have any effect on cancer deaths. There have been no studies to show they reduce the risk of dying from cancer. Still, they say setting an ambitious goal is important.

Carnival said the National Cancer Institute Study was designed so that any promising diagnostic results could be swiftly put into widespread practice while the longer-term study – expected to last up to a decade – progresses. She said the goal was to move closer to a future where cancers could be detected through routine bloodwork, potentially reducing the need for more invasive and burdensome procedures like colonoscopies, and therefore saving lives.

Scientists now understand that cancer is not a single disease, but hundreds of diseases that respond differently to different treatments. Some cancers have biomarkers that can be targeted by existing drugs that will slow a tumour’s growth. Many more targets await discovery.

“How do we learn what therapies are effective in which subtypes of disease? That to me is oceanic,” said Donald A. Berry, a biostatistician at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. “The possibilities are enormous. The challenges are enormous.”

Despite the challenges, he’s optimistic about cutting the cancer death rate in half over the next 25 years. “We can get to that 50% goal by slowing the disease sufficiently across the various cancers without curing anybody,” Berry said. “If I were to bet on whether we will achieve this 50% reduction, I would bet yes.”

Even without new breakthroughs, progress can be made by making care more equitable, said Dr. Crystal Denlinger, chief scientific officer for the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, a group of elite cancer centres.

And any effort to reduce the cancer death rate will need to focus on the biggest cancer killer, which is lung cancer. Mostly attributable to smoking, lung cancer now causes more cancer deaths than any other cancer. Of the 1,670 daily cancer deaths in the United States, more than 350 are from lung cancer.

Lung cancer screening is helping. The American Cancer Society says such screening helped drive down the cancer death rate 32% from its peak in 1991 to 2019, the most recent year for which numbers are available.

But only 5% of eligible patients are being screened for lung cancer. “It’s tragic,” said Dr. Roy Herbst, a lung specialist at Yale Cancer Center. “The moonshot is going to have to be a social fix as well as a scientific and medical fix,” Herbst said. “We’re going to have to find a way that screening becomes easier, that it’s fully covered, that we have more screening facilities.”

Biden planned to urge Americans who might have delayed cancer screenings during the pandemic to seek them out swiftly, reminding them that early detection can be key to avoiding adverse outcomes.

He was also set to highlight provisions in the Democrats’ healthcare and climate change bill that the administration believes will lower out of pocket drug prices for some widely used cancer treatments. He will also celebrate new guarantees for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits, that cover their potential cancer diagnoses.

Dr. Michael Hassett of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said Biden’s goal to reduce cancer deaths could met by following two parallel paths: one of discovery and the other making sure as many people as possible are reaping the advantages of existing therapies and preventive approaches. “If we can address both aspects, both challenges, major advances are possible,” Hassett said.

In breast cancer, for example, many women who could benefit from a hormone-blocking pill either never start the therapy or stop taking it before the recommended five years, Hassett’s research has found. “Those are big gaps,” Hassett said. “That’s a treatment that’s effective. But if many people aren’t taking that medication or if they’re taking it but stopping it before concluding the course of therapy, then the benefits that the medicine could offer aren’t realized.”

Human Rights: Israelis Retreat On New Rules For Romantic Relationships In West Bank

The Washington Post (US) reports that "Israel on Sunday issued revised protocols for the entry of foreign passport holders into the West Bank, omitting some controversial clauses after outcries from human rights organizations that said the previous version codified Israel’s discriminatory restriction of Palestinian movement.

The latest version of the guidelines, published Sunday night as a 90-page document after public and private condemnation from diplomats and international organizations, dropped the requirement that foreign passport holders declare romantic relationships with Palestinians to Israeli military authorities. It also does away with an academic quota allowing only 100 foreign professors and 150 students into the disputed territory.

It dropped a question in the earlier iteration that asked applicants to declare if they held or were expecting to inherit land in the West Bank, which had caused panic among many American Palestinians who thought it signaled changes to land ownership regulations. It also added a clause allowing doctors and teachers to obtain long-term visas and foreign spouses to work or volunteer.

The regulations will be implemented Oct. 20 and will continue over a two-year pilot period.

The U.S. ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, said that since February, he, the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and the U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs have been “aggressively engaged with the government of Israel on these draft rules — and we will continue to do so in the 45-day lead-up to implementation and during the two-year pilot period.”

He expressed “concerns” over the Israeli military’s “role in determining whether individuals invited by Palestinian academic institutions are qualified to enter the West Bank, and the potential negative impact on family unity.” He said he expected Israel to apply “equal treatment of all U.S. citizens and other foreign nationals traveling to the West Bank.”

“We have concerns with what the overall sentiment of what this is,” said a senior U.S. Embassy official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic. The official said that since February, American officials have clearly expressed consternation over the “concept of restricting or making cumbersome travel for U.S. citizens and also all foreign nationals.”

The official added that throughout negotiations with Israeli counterparts, American officials have made clear that the protocols would affect Israel’s attempts to join the Department of Homeland Security’s visa waiver program, by which citizens of member countries do not require a visa to enter the United States.

“For Israel to enter into visa waiver, there needs to be reciprocal privileges in terms of Americans being able to travel visa-free,” said the U.S. Embassy official. Since their original publication in February, the entry protocols have been subject to multiple legal interventions by human rights organizations, which argued that they formalize discriminatory practices against Palestinians under Israeli occupation.

Jessica Montell, the director of Hamoked, an Israeli human rights organization that petitioned the country’s high court to halt the rules, said that while some of the language has been “toned down,” it still grants the Israeli military “illegitimate” jurisdiction to interfere with public and private Palestinian life in the disputed territory.

The rules give COGAT, the Israeli military agency responsible for handling Palestinian civilian matters, the power to ban individuals coming from five countries with whom Israel has diplomatic relations: Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Bahrain and South Sudan. They effectively state that dual nationals — for example, holders of passports from Jordan, where at least 60 percent of the population is of Palestinian origin — are ineligible to enter the West Bank.

“This is blatant discrimination,” said Montell, whose organization plans to petition to prevent the rules from taking effect. The restrictions will not apply to the Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The territory’s two-tiered legal structure treats Jewish Israelis as citizens living under civilian rule while Palestinians are treated as combatants under military rule, subject to nighttime military raids, detention and bans on visiting their ancestral lands or accessing certain roads.

“If I had just fallen in love with an Israeli Jew, none of this would be a problem,” joked an American woman who is married to a Palestinian man and is a leader in the tech sector in Ramallah, the de facto Palestinian capital. She spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for her visa status, which has been threatened since moving with her husband and children to the West Bank 12 years ago.

She said that Israeli policies restricting Palestinian movement, which have for years existed in practice if not in the law, have effectively isolated Palestinian society from the economists, academics, investors and civil society leaders that experts say could help dig Palestinian society out of decades-old economic and political stagnation. On a personal level, she said, the rules have left thousands of American and foreign spouses in perpetual states of anxiety and uncertainty. The stress has triggered her own chronic illness, she said.

“I think what we’re seeing is a codifying of something that shouldn’t have been there in the first place,” she said. “And after years without permanency, we’re seeing a new level of panic.”

Society: In Sri Lanka, Triumphs in Cricket And Netball Bring Joy To A Nation In Crisis

The New York Times (US) also reports that "the streets of Sri Lanka’s capital have been jammed with crowds in recent months, as rage over an economic meltdown led to protests that?dethroned a long-ruling political dynasty.

Crowds were back in Colombo on Tuesday, but instead of railing against corruption, they were celebrating twin sporting triumphs.

Sri Lanka’s men’s cricket team captured the Asia Cup in the T20 format, the game’s shortest version, on Sunday, taking the top spot for the first time in eight years by upsetting Pakistan in the final. Almost no one had expected that result from a tournament that was itself?moved to the United Arab Emirates from Sri Lanka because of the country’s political and economic crises.

In Singapore on Sunday, Sri Lanka also won the Asia Cup in women’s netball, a game that is similar to basketball and, like cricket, came to South Asia through the influence of British colonial authorities.

During a parade that set off from Colombo’s international airport shortly after dawn on Tuesday, the winning teams waved from open-top buses as they were swarmed by cheering fans. For many in Sri Lanka, the spectacle was the sort of happy distraction that’s in short supply as the island nation reels from power cuts and shortages of food, fuel and medicine.

“There’s a major crisis ripping through homes all over the country at the moment, and political divisions have deepened as well,” said Andrew Fidel Fernando, a cricket writer and the author of “Upon a Sleepless Isle: Travels in Sri Lanka by Bus, Cycle and Trishaw."

“In that context, it’s hard to overstate how important sporting success is,” he said in an email. “It provides some snatches of joy, brings people together, and for however brief a time, makes a lot of people feel proud of their country as well.”

In July, Sri Lanka’s president at the time, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, was forced to relinquish power and?flee the country in a military plane after facing months of protests against an entrenched political elite that essentially?bankrupted the nation. Shortages of essential supplies have since eased somewhat, but normalcy is still a long way off.

Earlier this month, Sri Lanka and the International Monetary Fund reached a preliminary agreement on a bailout package worth nearly $3 billion?that would require the country to overhaul its economy (and which will still require final approval from the I.M.F.’s executive board). A few days later, Mr. Rajapaksa, the ousted ex-president, returned home, suggesting that his family remains deeply entrenched in the country’s politics.

Through it all, the men’s cricket team, which lacks a big-name star, has been on?a somewhat improbable roll — in a country where the sport has been deeply revered for generations.

Notably, in July, the team rebounded from a loss to thump Australia, the world’s top-ranked squad in tests, cricket’s five-day format and its longest, on home turf. On the second day of that five-day match,?demonstrators surrounded the stadium in the southern city of Galle as others?overran Mr. Rajapaksa's home in Colombo. (That was days before he resigned, fled to the Maldives, and?resigned but email (from Singapore.)

The win over Australia prompted some fans to hope that the men’s team, which many in the country see as aligned with their political movement, could win the T20 Asian championship this month. But that hope faced powerful headwinds in the form of sporting analytics that favored stronger teams, namely India and Pakistan.

“We were the absolute underdogs going in,” said Mevantha De Silva, 29, a cricket fan and the head of sales and marketing at a Sri Lankan company that owns luxury villas. “Everyone had written us off.”

Expectations fell further when Sri Lanka dropped the first match of the tournament to Afghanistan, an inferior team by cricket rankings.

“I was like, if this is what Afghanistan is doing to us, what are India and Pakistan going to do to us?” Mark Machado, a cricket commentator,?said in a podcast about Sri Lankan cricket on Monday. “Maybe we won’t even get to play them if we lose to Bangladesh.”

The team not only beat Bangladesh, but in the next rounds pulled off stunning upset victories against both India and Pakistan, driven largely by fielding that Mr. Fernando described as “electric, almost without exception.”

Compared with cricket, netball is far less popular in Sri Lanka, but because the country’s women’s squad has long been among the top three in the regional rankings, their Asia Cup success was not exactly a surprise, said Estelle Vasudevan, a reporter for the sports news site?ThePapare.com.

Still, that victory was notable because the team has a limited budget to help its players cope with power cuts and fuel shortages, Ms. Vasudevan said. And because it came about the same time as the men’s cricket victory, she added, many more Sri Lankans paid more attention to it.

Hiruni Kasturiarachchi, 28, a lawyer and a former member of Sri Lanka’s under-19 national netball team, said that she hoped the women’s Asia Cup would bring attention to a sport that most Sri Lankans were generally “not so keen on” — and that big victories of any kind, in any sport, were welcome at this juncture in the country’s history.

“People are so down these days because of the current crisis,” she said. “These sports victories really are a ray of light on gloomy days.”

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*Please note that certain headlines and articles may have been modified or summarized to fit the format of the newsletter.

If you have come across a positive headline or article in the last two weeks or interested to contribute to future original content,?please contact me directly on LinkedIn.