Digis Mak

Late last year, the Prague-based European Values ​​Center for Security Policy think tank opened a new office in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan.Billing itself as the “only European security-oriented think-tank with [a] legal entity in Taiwan”, according to its director, it is now on the front line of a battle for influence between Beijing and Taipei.“Taiwan is a goldmine of knowledge about China in general,” Jakub Janda, a Taipei-based director of the think tank, told Euronews. “Central European countries don't have much of this knowledge and we will need it in upcoming years, so we are setting up our office in Taipei to facilitate it.”Last year saw a groundswell of European support for Taiwan, a liberal Asian democracy that faces mounting diplomatic, military and financial pressure from...

When Playboy magazine was founded nearly 70 years ago, its images of women's bodies came in an era of sexual restraint. Playboy founder Hugh Hefner said he wanted to change the social and sexual values ​​of his time, arguing that the photos were emblematic of a sexual revolution, of sexual liberation and female empowerment. In the new A&E docuseries "Secrets of Playboy," the women who posed in the magazine's pages express a more critical view of how their bodies were used and who benefited from their bodies."The Playboy fantasy that he created did not allow for women's consent," said Miki Garcia, who appeared in Playboy as Miss January 1973.The first issue of Playboy launched with a nude photo of Marilyn Monroe, although journalist George Barris reported in "Marilyn: Her Life in Her O...

Hugh Hefner with multiple Playmates of the Month in the 1960s. Photo: Archive Photos/Getty Images Hugh Hefner, the always controversial founder of PlayboyHe died in 2017 at the age of 91. He left behind a confusing legacy, vacillating between sexual icon and alleged abuser. He died just before the explosion of the Me Too movement, and many critics felt that he evaded his inevitable reckoning as a result. But it may have finally arrived: playboy Secrets, a new ten-part docuseries on A&E, exposes the darkest side of Playboy and Hefner himself. Hefner started Playboy magazine in 19...