Its glühwein stalls, festooned with Christmas lights and tinsel, stand emptied and shuttered.

The horrific car-ramming attack on this Christmas market on Friday night left at least five people dead, including a 9-year-old boy, plunging this provincial German city into shock.

At the entrance to the market, grieving locals have lit candles and laid flowers to pay their respects, many feeling a profound sense of loss.

“I’ve seen a lot of misery, many people who were searching. Many tears, bewilderment and extreme states of shock,” said Corinna Pagels, an emergency psychological counselor offering help to those affected.

Amid the grief, the attack has revived memories in Germany of a similar assault in 2016, when more than a dozen people were mowed down and killed at a Christmas market in Berlin.

Back then, it was a 24-year-old Tunisian man, who had failed to gain asylum in Germany and pledged allegiance to the radical jihadists of ISIS, who plowed a truck through the festive crowd, fueling anger and suspicion across Germany towards a recent influx of mainly Muslim immigrants from the Middle East.

This time, the suspect is very different.

Taleb Al Abdulmohsen, 50, was originally from Saudi Arabia, but had lived in Germany since 2006, working as a consultant psychiatric doctor in a local clinic.

He is also an avowed atheist and anti-Islam, once describing himself in a 2019 newspaper interview as “the most aggressive critic of Islam in history.”

On social media, Abdulmohsen expressed support for the German anti-immigration AfD party and repeated his own frustrations with what he saw as the German government’s soft line on immigration, as well as what he believed was Berlin’s overly cordial relationship with the Saudi regime.

Recent messages included threats. In August, Abdulmohsen said that if Germany “wants to kill us, we will slaughter them, die, or go to prison with pride.”

A constant in his feed was his anger at Islam. Germany, Abdulmohsen claimed, wanted “to Islamize Europe.”

But for many Germans in Magdeburg, the fact the latest Christmas market attacker doesn’t fit the expected security profile simply doesn’t matter.

“I think there should be a clean-up of people who do these things,” she added.

“Now is time to close our borders,” said a local man, Tom, standing nearby.

German politicians from opposite ends of the political spectrum have seized on the car-ramming to attack the coalition government.

Both share an opposition to mass migration: Far-left party leader Sahra Wagenknecht asked Interior Minister Nancy Faeser “why so many tips and warnings were ignored beforehand.”

Meanwhile the far-right AfD – which has made significant ground this year – is organizing a rally in Magdeburg on Monday evening, and the party’s parliamentary chief has demanded on X a special session be called to discuss security matters in the wake of the attack.

It seems this horrific and deadly Christmas market attack, despite allegedly being committed by a self-confessed Islamophobe, is fueling Germany’s angry anti-immigration mood.

A 9-year-old girl pushes back against period shame, telling adults at the dinner table, “more than half the world’s population bleeds.” Two men fight for a woman’s heart by boasting how many books they’ve read by Japanese feminist icon Chizuko Ueno. A stalker following a young woman home is confronted and chased away by a female neighbor.

These scenes from China’s latest box-office hit, “Her Story,” have become the talk of Chinese social media, where the comedy is hailed by many female viewers as the country’s answer to “Barbie.”

Comments on Douban, China’s biggest movie review site where the movie is rated 9.1 out of 10, praise its unabashed celebration of “awakened” womanhood and bold social commentary on modern China – all delivered with laugh-out-loud humor.

Since its release on November 22, “Her Story” has raked in more than 680 million yuan ($93 million), according to ticket platform Maoyan, as it became mainland China’s top-grossing movie for 17 straight days.

But its witty critique of gender norms has also offended some men on Chinese social media, who have accused it of provoking “gender antagonism” – a phrase often used by state media to police online feminist discourse that authorities deem to have “crossed the line.”

Over the past decade, China’s ruling Communist Party – whose leadership is entirely male – has cracked down on feminist activism. In 2015, five feminists were detained for planning a protest against sexual harassment and, just months ago, a journalist who promoted the #MeToo movement was sentenced to five years in prison on subversion charges.

While less politically charged cultural works around women’s empowerment, like feminist comedy, are still allowed, they’re heavily regulated and often targeted by powerful unofficial forces – conservative men.

Rave reviews

Written and directed by Shao Yihui, “Her Story” revolves around the lives and relationships of three women in Shanghai: an independent single mother, her sharp-witted elementary school age daughter, and their new neighbor – a young singer and self-described “sober romantic fool.”

He Zeyu, a 29-year-old book editor in Beijing, has seen it three times.

For Xu, 20, a one-time watcher who gave only her surname due to privacy reasons, the comedy’s focus on “female empowerment” rather than “rehashing women’s struggles,” is what makes it “unique.”

Beyond its fresh, female-led narrative, Chinese moviegoers also praise the film’s “subtle yet brave” social critique on issues such as pandemic-era lockdowns, the decline of journalism — and what they see as the toxic culture of reporting the misdemeanors of others.

In one scene, a teacher criticizes a student for snitching on his classmate. In another, the young singer shows off her stockpile of daily essentials, while a large elephant statue stands in the living room – a silent nod to Shanghai’s weeks-long Covid lockdown in 2022.

“I can’t help but applaud for such clever expressions,” said Wang Rui, a 48-year-old man who recently took his wife for his second viewing.

“I laughed a lot during the first screening, but the second time, I picked up the hidden stuff behind the humor and found myself tearing up several times.”

One online commenter – who identified as a lesbian – was impressed by how the director slipped LGBTQ elements past China’s notoriously strict censors, noting fleeting scenes of rainbow flags and a gay couple flirting in the background.

“It’s rare to see such care and acknowledgment of sexual minorities in a mainstream movie presented in a way that’s subtle enough to pass the censorship,” read her post on Weibo, China’s equivalent of X, which has amassed thousands of likes.

“This is a movie that’s all about gender, yet it goes beyond that,” read a popular review on Douban with more than 8,000 likes.

Men at odds

While “Her Story” has been overwhelmingly celebrated by Chinese women, not all men are fans.

In Beijing, Xu said she saw an apparent couple arguing about the film as they left the theater – which she called “the real movie Easter egg.”

Speaking loudly enough to “be heard throughout theater,” the man told the woman the movie’s “narrative structure is sh***y,” which the woman disagreed with, then walked away, Xu recalled.

Similar anecdotes of men railing at the screenings or walking out of theaters have circulated on Chinese social media – mirroring the conservative backlash seen during screenings of “Barbie” in the United States last year.

“Many plots in this movie have already glorified most men in life … It looks objective and gentle enough to me,” Xu wrote on Xiaohongshu, China’s Instagram-like platform. The post has garnered over a thousand likes.

Yet, even “gentle” jokes seem too much for many.

Users on Hupu, a male-centric Chinese online forum, gave “Her Story” an average rating of 4.8 out of 10. They accused it of “demeaning and gaslighting men,” and shot down any positive comments about the movie – already few and far between on the platform.

It’s unclear how many commenters on Hupu had seen the movie, but Wang and a younger man, Chen Xiaohe, both said on Xiaohongshu that they enjoyed the screening.

But the film “shouldn’t be labeled as feminist,” he added.

Chen, 29, “really loves the light-hearted and humorous movie,” with “flesh-and-blood” and “fully developed” female characters, he posted on Xiaohongshu. Other male users on the female-dominated platform disagreed.

For Chen, it’s not surprising to see the wave of negative comments on Hupu.

Eroding tolerance of female voices

This isn’t the first time Chinese men on the internet have bristled at women poking fun at them.

Yang Li, a stand-up comedian known for her razor-sharp jokes about men, is a frequent target of them. Among all her punchlines, “how-come-he-looks-so-average-yet-still-so-confident” hit these men hardest.

Just last month, those still reeling from the four-year-old quip launched a nationwide boycott against China’s e-commerce giant JD for featuring Yang in a promotional livestream.

Caving to the online backlash, the company later issued an apology and cut ties with Yang. Yet, the male commenters didn’t stop there. Instead, they even tried to paint the vocal female comedian as an “evil foreign force” after Western media jumped on the story and showed support for skewering gender inequality.

“Feminist movement in China today is only visible on the cultural front,” said Lü Pin, a prominent Chinese feminist based in New York. “And this is exactly a sign of how much the movement has shrunk.”

However, even the already-restricted voices, such as feminist movies and stand-up shows, often come under attack from conservative men.

“Feminism in China is still pretty weak and hasn’t achieved much. But these men think their (future) interests are already under threat,” Lü said. “They see (the rise of feminism) as a dangerous signal.”

Shao, the screenwriter and director of “Her Story,” said in a promotional video that “feminism liberates not only women, but also men.”

“I believe that if they dig into the root causes, they will realize that they need to stand together with women,” she said.

She arrived in London with just one suitcase, full of mostly children’s clothes, and her young daughter in tow. Her home engulfed by war, Ukrainian mother Yana Felos found herself in the United Kingdom in April 2022 with no friends, no family and no community.

“I just started a new life from scratch,” recalled Felos, 34, who fled Russia’s full-scale invasion to come live with a host family – strangers at the time – who offered to take in Ukrainian refugees.

After close to three years of war, the situation has flipped. Felos says she has nothing to return to in Ukraine.

Felos’ last connection to Ukraine was her husband – but he could not leave and after she was abroad for so long, they recently finalized their divorce.

“He kept saying that the war would be over… wait a little, wait a little. The war will be over soon, and we will be together,” Felos said. But she gave up hope a long time ago that Ukraine would ever be safe enough to raise a family there.

Felos and her daughter are among the 6.8 million Ukrainian refugees who remain abroad, mostly in Europe, their lives mired in uncertainty.

Every day, she thinks about what will happen if the British government doesn’t extend her refugee visa in 2025. “There is no such thing as a backup plan,” she said.

Meanwhile, she has been building a life in London – securing her own apartment and a job teaching English at a lifelong learning center. Post-divorce, she has no intention of returning to Ukraine and wants to focus instead on opportunities to give her 6-year-old daughter Alisa a brighter future.

As communities become more fragmented, and the economy struggles, the Ukrainian government wants to encourage those who fled as refugees, most of them women and children, to return. It’s setting up a Ministry of National Unity tasked with creating programs and incentives to encourage people overseas to come home.

“We can’t pressure, push people to come back. I can give very loud message to Ukrainians who are abroad to come and help, to work in defense industry, to help our soldiers, to pay taxes, to support Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an October press conference.

It comes as Ukraine grapples with boosting national morale, among both civilians and troops on the frontlines, many who have been unable to rotate out to have time off.

Last month, Zelensky spoke about the need to end the conflict in 2025, saying, “from our side, we must do everything so that this war ends next year, ends through diplomatic means.” Incoming Trump administration officials in the United States have also been weighing proposals to stop the war.

As it drags on, though, Ukraine appears increasingly concerned about the economic consequences of a hollowed-out population, and the future ramifications of a brain-drain.

“Every month of the ‘hot’ phase of the war leads to more people adapting abroad and more destruction here, so fewer people will return,” said Ella Libanova, an economics professor and director of the Ptoukha Institute for Demography and Social Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

And in the nearer term, it’s possible that more Ukrainians could leave.

The overall security situation remains difficult, with Ukraine hit by a recent surge in Russian ballistic missile strikes, and drone attacks increasing each month. Russia launched 2,434 drones in November alone.

On one of her return visits to see her former husband in Ukraine, Felos recalls telling her daughter that the sounds of nearby explosions were fireworks.

Russia also continues to bombard Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as winter arrives and residential areas are regularly hit. The Kyiv School of Economics estimates that as of January 2024, almost 250,000 buildings had been damaged and destroyed, including 222,600 private houses and 27,000 apartment buildings. In a significant number of cities, more than half the housing stock has been damaged.

Even so, many Ukrainians are aching to go back.

For some, the life they once built in Ukraine feels too substantial to simply abandon. People saved their whole lives to buy homes, build businesses and get professional qualifications there.

“It’s been called the most professional refugee wave in recent (history),” Voronovych said, adding that most are now underemployed, working “low-paid jobs” that don’t match their capabilities.

For some Ukrainians, the decision to return has less to do with economics or government incentives, and everything to do with the practicalities of everyday life – mothers are waiting for schools to reopen, or for schools operating underground to protect students from Russian attacks to return to normal.

Victoria Rybka, 40, from the city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, spent the first few weeks of the war sheltering in a basement with her two young children, before fleeing with them to Europe. But in Germany, one of her daughters struggled to communicate in school, and her other daughter developed a skin condition, believed to be stress-related.

Just two months later, Rybka decided to return, feeling a pull to return to her job in the police force and to her family.

“I can’t leave my husband. We’ve been through a lot together,” Rybka said.

Kharkiv was eerily empty at the time, with mostly men and elderly people who stayed behind, she said. Only one other mother in their block of flats came back in the early days of war, but more have since trickled home as schools reopened underground.

“Everyone makes their own choice,” she acknowledged. “I made my choice – this is my home.”

For more than a week, the sprawling Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank has echoed to the sound of heavy gunfire – with masked snipers on roof tops and muffled explosions within its warren of alleyways.

But the combat has not involved the Israeli military, which has launched countless raids in recent years against what it calls terrorists in the camp, a stronghold of resistance to the Israeli occupation.

This fight is between Palestinians: the security forces of the Palestinian Authority and militant groups aligned with Hamas who say the PA has sold out to Israel.

The authority, which is supported by the West, launched its largest security operation in years to dislodge the militant groups in an attempt to show that it can handle the security situation in the West Bank as it eyes control over a post-war Gaza.

But the operation appears only to have stiffened resistance and alienated many of the thousands of civilians who live there. And they have gained little ground, with militants still in control of much of the camp.

The authority’s security forces have tried to arrest dozens of men they describe as outlaws trying to “hijack” the camp, which was established for Palestinians uprooted from their homes after Israel’s creation in 1948 and is now a built-up area that is home to some 25,000 people.

Hamas describes the fighters in the camp as the “resistance” – a coalition of militant groups that sees the authority and its security forces as doing Israel’s bidding.

The militant factions include the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Qassem Brigades, who fight under the banner of the Jenin Battalion.

The authority says that its forces have “advanced in very important ways” in the camp. But they have little of the technology and weaponry the Israeli military can bring to bear, and on Sunday a member of the Palestinian Presidential Guard was killed by militants’ gunfire.

One militant leader has also been killed, as have three teenagers, the youngest of them 14. Each side blamed the other for their deaths.

The flare in violence caps off a deadly year in the area. Israel conducted a days-long raid in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas, in the northern West Bank, in September, killing at least 39 people and leaving widespread destruction, according to the authority’s health ministry and United Nations. Among them were at least nine militants, according to public statements from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

A litmus test for Gaza

The Palestinian Authority is nominally in charge of security in much of the West Bank under the Oslo Accords, signed in the 1990s with the aim of establishing a Palestinian state. But in the years since, Israel has extended its control of the occupied territory, expanded settlements and carried out frequent raids against militant Palestinian groups.

If the authority wants to take on a broader role in administering Palestinian areas or seek a return to Gaza – something that Israeli government has persistently ruled out – Jenin is a litmus test.

Events in Jenin are also a bellwether for Iranian influence among the militants. Al-Sa’adi acknowledged that help was coming from Iran, a growing concern to the Israeli security services.

“We receive support from Iran and from anyone willing to help us, but we do not belong to Iran or to any external entity outside Palestine,” he said.

The extent and type of Iranian backing for the militants is hard to assess. But the Israeli security forces said in November they recovered large amounts of Iranian-supplied weapons near Jenin.

Defense Minister Israel Katz said on a recent visit to the West Bank that “Iran will not succeed in establishing an Iranian ‘octopus’ arm’” in the refugee camps, and a new fence on the border with Jordan would “prevent Iranian plans to smuggle weapons into Israel through Jordan.”

The Jenin Battalion is entrenched in the camp, the nerve center of a new wave of Palestinian militancy in the occupied territories.

The militant group’s growing use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) has added a layer of complexity for Israeli and the Palestinian authority’s efforts to combat them.

“Urban warfare is our expertise, and it’s a game-changer,” he added.

The security forces maintain the militants are endangering innocent lives by planting explosive mines in the streets and in residences.

Aqel and other Jenin residents said the authority’s security operation had made life much more difficult – and dangerous in the camp, with some suggesting that it amounted to collective punishment. By the end of last week, much of the camp was without water and electricity. Garbage was piling up and children were unable to get to school.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said last week it had suspended its services to the camp, which include education and healthcare, amid the fighting. The agency condemned the occupation of its health center in Jenin camp by “Palestinian armed actors” last week.

Local resident Ihab Sa’adi urged fresh dialogue between the Palestinian Authority and the militants.

Rajab, the security forces’ spokesman, said the Palestinian Authority had tried to negotiate with the factions – but its efforts had been ignored.

He said the militants’ action “spreads chaos in the West Bank and aids the Israeli occupation,” he said.

Amid the fighting and the sealing of exits from the camp, the mood among residents has grown more desperate.

“We don’t feel safe here, we can’t walk in the street, and we can’t go on a roof top. Life is almost paralyzed,” he said.

He added that the authority should “give us the names of the ones you claim are outlaws and the entire camp will hand them over. The outlaws are inside the presidential compound,” referring to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ residence in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Palestinian officials have frequently complained that they don’t have the equipment they need to confront the militants. The authority also appears to have little support in areas like Jenin’s refugee camp which for now remains firmly under the control of the Jenin Battalion.

A former US Marine accused of training Chinese military pilots will be extradited to face charges in the United States, Australia’s Attorney General confirmed Monday, dealing a blow to supporters who have mounted a public campaign for his freedom.

Daniel Duggan, a naturalized Australian, was arrested in the state of New South Wales in 2022 based on a 2017 US grand jury indictment that accuses him of training Chinese military pilots in violation of a US arms embargo.

Duggan denies the charges, claiming that US officials knew about his activities and that he was only training civilian pilots as China’s aviation sector boomed.

Attorney General Mark Dreyfus confirmed that Duggan “should be extradited to face prosecution for the offences of which he is accused.”

“Mr Duggan was given the opportunity to provide representations as to why he should not be surrendered to the United States. In arriving at my decision, I took into consideration all material in front of me,” Dreyfus said in a statement Monday.

His decision follows court approval for Duggan’s extradition by a magistrate in May.

In a statement, the pilot’s wife, Saffrine Duggan, said she and their six children were “shocked and absolutely heartbroken by this callous and inhumane decision which has been delivered just before Christmas with no explanation or justification from the Government.”

“We feel abandoned by the Australian Government and deeply disappointed that they have completely failed in their duty to protect an Australian family. We are now considering our options,” she said.

If convicted, Duggan faces a prison sentence of up to 65 years.

Argument against extradition

Duggan has been in custody since his arrest in October 2022, just weeks after returning to his family in Australia from six years working in China. He was detained by Australian police acting on the request of US authorities.

The 2017 indictment filed in the District of Columbia says that “as early as 2008,” Duggan received an email from the US State Department telling him he was required to register with the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls and apply for permission to train a foreign air force.

Instead, it claims he conspired with others – including the Test Flying Academy of South Africa (TFASA) – to export defense services in violation of an arms embargo on China.

The statement said Duggan undertook one test-pilot contract for the company in South Africa between November and December 2012, and “never worked for TFASA on any of its training mandates in China.”

Duggan moved to China in 2013 and renounced his US citizenship at the US embassy in Beijing in 2016, though it was backdated on a certificate to 2012 to reflect when he became an Australian citizen, according to his lawyers.

In an 89-page submission filed to Dreyfus’ office in August, Duggan’s lawyers alleged the former US serviceman had become a political pawn during a time of heightened US-China tensions.

It said that his case had been used to send a message to Western pilots that any dealings with China will not be tolerated by the US, or its allies.

“The extradition request is a brutal response to US Sinophobia,” his lawyer Bernard Collaery wrote in a cover letter attached to the submission.

“While scapegoating Daniel Duggan may please some, his extradition into a baying political environment and semi-lawless prison system may also constitute a profound moral and foreign policy failure by Australia,” he wrote.

Duggan’s arrest two years ago came as the US, the United Kingdom and Australia formed a stronger security bond under AUKUS, a deal they signed in 2021 to join forces in the Pacific to counter an increasingly assertive China.

Since then, the UK and Australia have tightened their laws surrounding former military personnel and their post-service activities.