the millennium now ending. I thought about the Columbian Exchange, the swap of animals, plants, genes, germs, weapons and peoples that utterly remade both the New World and the Old, and I couldn't help wondering about another exchange -- Zheng He's -- that never took place, yet could have. If ancient China had been greedier and more outward-looking, if other traders had followed in Zheng He's wake and then continued on, Asia might well have dominated Africa and even Europe. Chinese might have settled in not only Malaysia and Singapore, but also in East Africa, the Pacific Islands, even in America. Perhaps the Famao show us what the mestizos of such a world might have looked liked, the children of a hybrid culture that was never born. What'Hora Cero': The Venezuelan crisis through one young mother's eyes For Claudia Vivas, protests and repression in Venezuela have made life harder.

 -- "Upheaval" describes everyday life in Venezuela.

The South American country has been mired in an economic, political and humanitarian crisis that has spilled into the streets, with almost daily protests affecting the lives of 30 million people who either participate in them or are forced to navigate through roadblocks and debris.

In cities and towns across the country, people have come out by the thousands since early April to protest a government many no longer recognize as legitimate.

Since then, the streets of the capital, Caracas, have become the backdrop for a deadly battle of wills between the government of President Nicolas Maduro and a coalition of opposition