The saleswoman waited for Yang Jinzhong at the bus stop. With every call and meeting, the saleswoman made the same pitch: By investing just a little bit of money, Ms. Yang could secure a spot in a retirement home at a great price and make some extra cash to boot. In the end, Ms. Yang gave $31,000, her life savings, to the retirement company. Now the saleswoman’s company is one of hundreds of recent cases that are under investigation or have been prosecuted by Chinese authorities who have grown increasingly concerned about retirement home scams.

BANGKOK — Myanmar’s month-old military regime fired the country’s ambassador to the United Nations on Saturday, a day after he gave an impassioned speech to the U.N. General Assembly in Geneva, pleading for international help in restoring democracy to his homeland. The ambassador, U Kyaw Moe Tun, ended his speech with a three-finger salute, a gesture from the “Hunger Games” films that has become a symbol of pro-democratic defiance for protesters in Myanmar and, before that, in neighboring Thailand. State television announced his firing, saying he had “betrayed the country and spoken for an unofficial organization which doesn’t represent the country and had abused the power and responsibilities of an ambassador.”Mr. Kyaw Moe Tun’s speech buoyed Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement, which has held protests every day since Feb. 1, when the military took control of the country in a coup, and has broadened into a civil disobedience movement with hundreds of thousands of people walking off their jobs.

“What’s wrong with the Maldives campaign is the timing,” he said, noting that it started before travelers could be vaccinated. When the Maldives shut its borders last March to guard against the virus, it did not make the decision lightly: Tourism employs more than 60,000 of the country’s 540,000 people, more than any other industry in the private sector, according to Nashiya Saeed, a consultant in the Maldives who recently co-wrote a government study on the pandemic’s economic impact.“When tourism shut down, there was no revenue coming into the country,” Ms. Saeed said. Around the same time, the country’s public relations agency switched its international marketing campaign and urged travelers to “rediscover” the Maldives.

FAIZABAD, Afghanistan — The Taliban prison is a ruined house, a cave, a filthy basement in an abandoned dwelling, or a village mosque. Malik Mohammadi, a calm 60-year-old farmer, watched the Taliban put to death his 32-year-old son Nasrullah, an army officer, in one such prison.“The Taliban beat him,” Mr. Mohammadi said quietly. While the Afghan government and Taliban negotiators in Qatar fitfully talk about meeting for talks, even as the idea of real peace recedes, the reality is that the insurgents already hold much of the country.

Her request: Help me obtain a divorce within a day. Ms. Shi, a 38-year-old engineer, was trying to get ahead of a Chinese government rule that from Jan. 1, couples seeking a divorce must first wait 30 days. Ms. Shi said that forcing unhappy couples to stay married would only lead to more fighting. The new cooling-off period was introduced to deter impulsive divorces, but it prompted a scramble at the end of last year among couples urgently wanting to part ways.