Our daily excursion around the world

🇫🇷🥖 The French baguette was one of 23 items added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list yesterday. The list represents skills and social habits that the organization deems are important to preserve for future generations. Alongside French baguettes, UNESCO also added traditional tea-making techniques from China, the practice of modern dance in Germany, and a traditional Cambodian martial art form called Kun Lbokator, among others.

🇨🇳 Chinese residents who attended weekend protests against Covid restrictions are starting to be contacted by police. Officials have clamped down following a weekend of rare anti-government demonstrations, quashing more protests planned for several major cities. Authorities are reportedly stopping citizens in major cities, then checking their phones for signs of VPNs or foreign apps like Twitter, Instagram, and Telegram. Separately, former Chinese President Jiang Zemin – who led China out of isolation following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests – died at 96 yesterday.

🇸🇾 ISIS confirmed its mysterious leader was recently killed in battle in Syria, less than nine months after he assumed the role. The militant Islamist group also named a successor, but provided no information about either men, apart from assumed names. It marks the second ISIS leader to be killed this year, after the group’s previous head died via suicide bomb during a US raid in Syria in February.