Debris from a downed drone was found outside Ukraine’s parliament building on Saturday morning after the country’s defense systems largely succeeded in fending off a widescale drone attack launched overnight by Russia.

Ukraine managed to shoot down 58 of the 67 Shahed drones launched by Russia, the Ukrainian Air Force said in a Telegram post on Saturday. The attack targeted multiple locations including the northeastern city of Sumy, the southern city of Kherson, the central region of Poltava and the capital of Kyiv.

The head of Kyiv’s military administration, Serhii Popko, described it as “another massive drone attack” on the city, in a post on his Telegram channel.

At least one drone appeared to have been shot down over the Ukrainian parliament as pictures shared online by the parliament showed debris scattered outside the building’s entrance.

Kyiv’s air defenses managed to shoot down all of the Russian drones which began approaching the city at around 3am local time (8pET), Popko said, with none of the drones managing to reach their targets.

There were no hits to critical or residential infrastructure during the attack, the region’s military chief, Ruslan Kravchenko said in a separate Telegram post. No casualties have been reported from the attack either, which saw air raid sirens sound for over eight hours, Kravchenko added.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has been lobbying strongly in recent days for further air defenses for Ukraine in the face of a barrage of Russian attacks across the country.

Addressing a forum in Italy on Friday, Zelensky highlighted how Russia has launched “missiles, attack drones, and heavy aircraft bombs” against Ukrainian cities and villages. “Big, small, it doesn’t matter for them,” he added.

On September 1 and 2, the western city of Kharkiv came under respective missile and bomb attacks. One day later, Russian forces carried out a missile strike on a military educational facility in the central city of Poltava, killing over 55 people. On September 4, the western city of Lviv, long considered to be largely safe from Russian attacks, was hit by a missile strike targeting civilian infrastructure, killing seven people.

Venezuelan security forces surrounded the Argentine embassy in the capital Caracas on Friday after two opposition members took refuge inside, according to posts by the opposition duo on social media.

The pair joined four other Venezuelan opposition figures who have taken refuge in the embassy this year.

One of the men, Pedro Urruchurtu, the international coordinator for opposition leader María Corina Machado, wrote on X that there were patrols of hooded and armed officials surrounding the diplomatic building.

The other, former deputy Omar González, also posted on X, writing: “They cut off the electricity service to the Argentine embassy in Caracas, which is currently besieged by agents of the Sebin (Bolivarian National Intelligence Service) and other state security bodies.”

A statement issued by Vente Venezuela, a movement led by Machado, described the situation as a “siege.”

“Patrols with regime agents continue to arrive at the headquarters of the Argentine embassy in Caracas. We hold Nicolás Maduro responsible for this siege against our leaders who are taking refuge in the embassy,” the statement said.

The Argentine government has filed requests for them to be allowed to leave Venezuela but they have not so far been granted.

The expulsions came after Argentina’s government questioned the widely disputed results of the July 28 elections, in which Maduro was proclaimed the winner despite detailed results not being made public as requested by several governments and international organizations.

The developments at the Argentine embassy come hours after the country’s foreign ministry asked the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants against Maduro and other senior government officials for possible crimes against humanity allegedly committed during post-election protests.

On Thursday, while speaking at a forum in Buenos Aires, Argentinian President Javier Milei called Maduro a “criminal.”

Argentina has rejected an arrest warrant issued by a Venezuelan court against Edmundo González, candidate of the opposition Democratic Unity Platform (PUD) and Maduro’s main rival, for his alleged responsibility in the publication of detailed data on the presidential elections.

González denies the charges. The PUD says it obtained those records through its election witnesses.

The heads of the United States’ CIA and the UK’s foreign intelligence service, known as MI6, spoke at length about the key security issues plaguing the world in an unprecedented joint public appearance in London on Saturday, in a wide-ranging discussion that covered Russian aggression, the threat from China and the war in Gaza.

The event – a discussion at the FT Weekend Festival chaired by the newspaper’s editor Roula Khalaf – marked the first time the two men – Richard Moore of MI6 and CIA chief Bill Burns – have appeared on a public stage together.

The two men spoke of the significance of the partnership between the US and the UK, particularly in the face of Russian aggression. Burns cited the run-up to the war in Ukraine, launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin in February 2022, as one of the best examples.

“Going back to the fall of 2021, the two of us together, our services together, were able to provide credible, early, accurate warning of the invasion that was coming, which was not a small thing at the time, because almost all of the other services around the world, our intelligence counterparts, thought this was a bluff on Putin’s part,” the CIA chief said.

“I think that good intelligence enabled our leaders, our political leaderships, to mobilize a very strong coalition to counter Putin’s aggression.”

Burns said that this helped the Ukrainians to defend themselves. He also spoke of a “novel approach” to declassify some secrets in that period as a way of denying Putin the chance to peddle false narratives. This put Putin in the “unaccustomed and uncomfortable position of being on the wrong foot,” Burns said.

Speaking on the threat from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, Moore said there was a lot of “pragmatic cooperation” between these countries.

“You can see it, of course, sadly, on the battlefield in Ukraine. You can see North Korea, North Korean weaponry. You can see Iranian drones. You can see the sort of help that the Chinese have provided through sort of dual-use type material. You see all of that playing out in our world.”

Adding to this, Burns said that there has not yet been any “direct evidence” of China providing weapons and munitions to Russia for use in Ukraine. However, he said: “We see lots of things just short of that, as Richard said, in terms of dual-use items, the kind of things that have enabled Putin over the course of the last 18 months or so to significantly rebuild his defense industrial base and that poses a real danger.”

Asked about concerns over potential Russian escalation in response to the West’s supply of weapons to Ukraine, Burns said: “I think there was a moment in the fall of 2022 when there was a genuine risk of the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons. I have never thought, however, this is the view of my agency, that we should be unnecessarily intimidated by that. Putin’s a bully and he is going to continue to saber-rattle from time to time.”

US President Joe Biden had sent him to speak with “one of our Russian counterparts, Sergei Naryshkin, at the end of 2022 to make very clear what the consequences of that kind of escalation would be,” Burns added.

Denting Kremlin’s narrative

Speaking on Ukraine’s surprise offensive into Russia’s Kursk border region, Burns said that said that such developments help to counter Putin’s “cocky and smug attitude.”

According to Burns, Putin’s approach to the war in Ukraine has been that it is “only a matter of time before the Ukrainians are going to be ground down, and all of their supporters in the West are going to be worn down,” allowing the Russian president then to dictate terms for a settlement.

Developments such as Ukraine’s Kursk offensive help to “put a dent” in that narrative and raise questions among the Russian elite about “where all this is headed,” Burns said. The offensive last month saw Ukrainian forces storm into Kursk in a cross-border incursion that caught even American officials by surprise.

Burns described the Kursk offensive as a “significant tactical achievement” that has served to boost Ukrainian morale as well as expose some of the vulnerabilities of Putin’s Russia and his military. Last year’s short-lived insurrection carried out by former Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin also helped to dent this narrative, Burns said.

The CIA chief does not, however, see Putin’s grip on power weakening. “He does one thing really well, and that’s repress people at home.”

Gaza ceasefire efforts

Speaking on the negotiations to secure a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza, Burns said that the US was “working very hard” with mediators Egypt and Qatar to refine a framework proposed by Biden in May and put it “in a good enough proposal” that both the Israeli and Hamas leaderships will see the value in moving ahead with it.

He stressed that in his experience with Middle East negotiations, “perfect is never on the menu,” adding that he could not say for sure that “we’re going to succeed in that,” nor how close the US and mediators might be to a deal right now.

A lot is at stake for Palestinians and Israelis, as well as strategically in the region, Burns said. But above all, what’s at stake is “in human terms,” he said, pointing to the hostages taken by Hamas-led militants who are still alive and living in “hellish conditions,” as well as the “countless mothers and fathers in Gaza who are dealing with their own terrible losses” and the worsening humanitarian situation in the strip.

Biden first announced the framework for a peace plan between Israel and Hamas on May 31 – to which he said Israel had agreed. The three-phase proposal paired the release of hostages with a “full and complete ceasefire.” The plan envisioned the withdrawal of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops eastward from Gaza.

Since then, both sides have pointed to what they see as glaring holes in the framework, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisting that Israel’s forces will never leave the stretch along the Egypt-Gaza border known as the Philadelphi Corridor.

The hostage release efforts gained new urgency earlier this month with the discovery of the bodies of six hostages in a tunnel beneath the southern Gaza city of Rafah, including the Israeli-American citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin.

The conversation with Moore and Burns was preceded by a jointly-penned editorial in the Financial Times newspaper in which they stressed the international world order was “under threat in a way we haven’t seen since the Cold War.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Ukraine appears to be calling on a fleet of fire-spewing “dragon drones” in its war with Russian invaders, putting a modern twist on a munition used to horrific effect in both world wars.

A series of videos posted on social media, including on Telegram from the Ukrainian Defense Ministry on Wednesday, show the low-flying drones dropping torrents of fire – actually molten metal – onto Russian-held positions in tree lines.

The white-hot mixture of aluminum powder and iron oxide, called thermite, burns at temperatures up to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,200 degrees Celsius). It can quickly burn off trees and vegetation giving cover to Russian troops, if not killing or disabling the troops outright.

As it falls from the drone, the thermite resembles the fire coming from the mouth of the mythical dragon, giving the drones their nickname.

“Strike Drones are our wings of vengeance, bringing fire straight from the sky!” a social media post from Ukraine’s 60th Mechanized Brigade said.

“They become a real threat to the enemy, burning his positions with an accuracy that no other weapon can achieve,” the post continued.

“When our ‘Vidar’ works – the Russian woman will never sleep,” it added. Vidar is the Norse god of vengeance.

Creating that kind of fear is likely the main effect of Ukraine’s thermite drones, according to Nicholas Drummond, a defense industry analyst specializing in land warfare and a former British Army officer.

“I understand that Ukraine only possesses a limited capacity to deliver a thermite effect, so this is a niche capability rather than new mainstream weapon,” he said.

But he acknowledges the terror thermite can create.

“I would not have liked to have been on the receiving end,” Drummond said.

Incendiary weapons in war

Thermite can easily burn through almost anything, including metal, so there’s little protection from it.

It was discovered by a German chemist is the 1890s and was originally used to weld railroad tracks.

But its military potency soon became apparent, with the Germans dropping it from zeppelins as bombs over Britain in World War I, according to a history from McGill University in Montreal.

Both Germany and the Allies used thermite aerial bombs in World War II, and they also utilized it to disable captured artillery pieces, putting thermite into the breech and melting the weapon shut from the inside.

According to Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), a British anti-war advocacy group, Ukraine has previously used thermite dropped from drones to permanently disable Russian tanks.

The thermite is dropped “directly through the hatches, where the intense heat quickly ignites and destroys everything inside,” an AOAV report says.

“This precision, combined with the drone’s ability to bypass traditional defenses, makes thermite bombs a highly effective tool in modern warfare,” it says.

Thermite is just one type of incendiary weapon, with others including napalm and white phosphorus.

The United Nations Office for Disarmament says incendiary weapons can cause massive destruction and environmental damage.

“The fires produced by the weapon itself or ignited by it are difficult to predict and to contain. Therefore, incendiary weapons are often described as ‘area weapons’ due to their impact over a broad area,” it says on its website.

The United States used napalm to burn much of Japan’s capital to the ground in World War II’s infamous Tokyo fire raids. US forces also used it extensively in Vietnam.

The US military has also used thermite in grenades, with the US Army’s Pine Bluff Arsenal producing the weapons from the 1960s through 2014 and then resuming production again in 2023.

What thermite does to humans

Under international law, thermite is not banned for military combat, but its use on civilian targets is prohibited because of the horrible effects it can have on the human body.

In a 2022 report on incendiary weapons, such as thermite, Human Rights Watch called them “notorious for their horrific human cost,” including inflicting fourth- or fifth-degree burns.

“They can cause damage to muscles, ligaments, tendons, nerves, blood vessels, and even bones,” HRW said.

Treatment can last months and require daily attention. If victims survive, they are left with physical and psychological scars, HRW said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Moscow’s initial push into Ukraine was stopped far short of capturing the capital of Kyiv, and the sides have fought over much of the same territory for most of the war.

Ukraine’s forces, outnumbered and outgunned by Russia, have proven adept at innovating with small drones to hammer Moscow’s troops and equipment.

A Ukrainian incursion into Russian territory near Kursk in August surprised Putin and has boosted Ukrainian confidence that it can prevail in the war.

Kyiv has accused Russian forces of using unspecified incendiary munitions on civilian targets earlier in the war, including on a village outside of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in May 2022.

Ukrainian officers also accused Russia of using incendiaries in attacks on the city of Bakhmut last year.

Those uses of incendiaries haven’t led to quick victory for Russia, and Drummond doesn’t think they are a battlefield game changer for Ukraine either.

“If Ukraine wants to achieve real impact, it needs sufficient mass to force a proper breakthrough as it has in Kursk. This is what victory looks like,” Drummond said.

But thermite does give Russian troops another reason to be fearful of Ukrainian drones, he said.

“We have seen instances where Russian forces attacked by multiple drones have deserted their positions. The more Ukraine can instill a fear of drones the better its chances of success,” he said.

“Thermite keeps up the pressure.”

In southern Israel’s Negev desert, residents of the Bedouin village of Khirbet Karkur live in tents and metal-clad makeshift homes. Not far from the border with Gaza, they hear the sounds of the war unfolding next door.

There are some 300,000 Arab Bedouins living in the Negev. As Muslim-Arab citizens of Israel, many are still struggling to find their place in Israeli society 75 years after the Jewish state was established, despite many of them serving in the military.

The war with Hamas has only deepened that sense of uncertainty. Bedouins living near the Gaza border feel they have been doubly victimized: first by being within striking distance of Hamas rockets with minimal protection, and second by state marginalization that has only grown worse since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel.

The village of Khirbet Karkur is not recognized by the Israeli state. Residents live a semi-nomadic life, in an open desert area and in dwellings that aren’t connected to the Israeli electricity grid or water supply. Like many other unrecognized villages, it has no schools or hospitals, and residents say that women have been forced to give birth in cars on the way to hospital because ambulances struggle to reach the town.

Villagers say the rest of the country had all but forgotten them – until last week, when a swarm of journalists travelled along dirt roads to the dusty village to mark the release of 52-year-old Farhan Al-Qadi from Hamas captivity. Khirbet Karkur is his hometown.

Al-Qadi was abducted along with 250 others by Hamas-led militants on October 7. He was taken from Kibbutz Magen, where he was working as a security guard, and was rescued last week from a tunnel in Gaza by Israeli security forces, the Israeli military said.

Speaking to reporters the day after his rescue, Al-Qadi said he wishes “that the war ends for all Palestinian and Israeli families.”

Israeli officials have said that Al-Qadi’s kidnapping and release shows that all its citizens – Jews and Muslims alike – are equally vulnerable to terrorism, adding that the state is committed to securing the freedom of every citizen.

Israel’s Bedouin community is considered a subset of the country’s Arab population, which makes up about 20% of the total population in the country of 10 million.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Al-Qadi the day he was released, and according to a transcript supplied by the Prime Minister’s Office, said: “I want you to know that we do not forget anyone, just as we did not forget you. We are committed to returning everyone, without exception.”

In November, the prime minister visited the IDF’s so-called Bedouin battalion in the Negev, a unit mostly made up of Muslim Bedouin soldiers, saying that “Jewish and Bedouin commanders are standing shoulder-to-shoulder,” and that “our partnership is the future of us all against these savages.”

But some Bedouin leaders and residents of Al-Qadi’s village say the state is celebrating his rescue without taking proper action to address the community’s decades-long needs.

Waleed Alhwashla, a Bedouin member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, said that while Netanyahu and his coalition portray Israeli Arabs as equal to Jewish citizens, the reality on the ground is starkly different.

‘Displacement and segregation’

The semi-nomadic Bedouin group is predominantly tribal, with family trees that extend into Gaza and Egypt’s northern Sinai. Many identify distinctly as Bedouin Israelis, while others see themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Unlike most Jewish Israelis, Bedouins are not required to serve in the Israeli military, though some choose to do so anyway, often in specialized units operating in the Negev desert.

Bedouins who join the military receive support from the state to complete high school studies, Hebrew courses and driving lessons. Some also join up to protect the land they live in, Israeli media reported, especially after October 7.

Most Bedouins live in the 4,700-square-mile Negev, which before Israel’s founding in 1948 was home to some 92,000 Bedouins. Only 11,000 remained after the Arab-Israeli war that followed.

Today, over 300,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel live in the Negev, including more than 80,000 who reside in unrecognized Bedouin villages, according to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. Many of those settlements predate Israel’s founding.

These villages are often situated next to waste dumps, with little access to water and electricity, said Fayez Sohaiban, a relative of Al-Qadi and former mayor of the nearby Bedouin city of Rahat.

“People are suffocating,” he said.

Residents of unrecognized villages regularly face demolition orders for their buildings due to lack of building permits, they say.

Demolitions have occurred on a “weekly” basis this year, according to the rights group Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality (NCF). In the first half of 2024 alone, 2,007 Bedouin structures were demolished by the state despite a temporary halt in the early months of the war, the group said, up from 1,767 demolitions during the same period of the previous year.

Bedouin residents and leaders say their plight has worsened since the war started.

In May, Amnesty International said that Israel had demolished 47 homes in the unrecognized village of Wadi al-Khalil “without proper consultation or compensation,” adding that Israeli authorities have over the years “employed numerous pretexts to push for the displacement and segregation of the Bedouin community in the Negev,”  from expanding highways and industrial zones, to establishing forests for the Jewish National Fund and the designation of military zones. A report by the NCF said in the case of Wadi al-Khalil, the demolition was justified by the Israeli state as necessary for the extension of Highway 6, “a project not yet scheduled for construction nor budgeted by the state, despite the humanitarian crisis it caused.”

Bedouin-Israeli communities are also among the poorest in the country, with close to 80% of Bedouin children living below the poverty line, NCF said, citing data from Israel’s National Insurance Institute.

Some villagers are afraid to criticize the government, citing fear of retribution by the authorities, which they say has increased since October 7. Villagers say authorities closely monitor their social media for any signs of support for Palestinians in Gaza, or criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war.

United Nations officials have repeatedly called on Israel to stop demolishing homes and property belonging to the Bedouin community.

Victims of October 7

When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 22 Bedouins were killed, seven of them by rocket fire that fell onto unrecognized villages, according to Alhwashla. A total of eight Bedouins were kidnapped, according to the Hostage Families Forum. Three have been freed, one is believed to be dead in Gaza, one was killed by IDF fire while attempting to flee, and three remain in Hamas captivity, according to the forum.

In April, when Israel and Iran traded direct fire for the first time, a 7-year-old Bedouin girl in the Negev was severely wounded by shrapnel from an intercepted missile, according to Israeli officials.

Last week, residents of unrecognized Bedouin villages filed a petition with the High Court of Justice “demanding that the state provide protective measures against rocket and missile fire,” according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, a partner to the petitioners.

“Approximately 85,000 residents of these unrecognized villages lack any means of protection against rocket, missile, or drone attacks,” the association said, adding that residents have since October 7 been forced to rely on “makeshift protective measures, such as sheltering under bridges, digging trenches, or finding narrow crevices in the ground.”

“These villages are without sirens, Iron Dome coverage, or any formal state-regulated protection, due to their unrecognized status,” the association said, citing the petition.

Still, Bedouin communities feel that such efforts have done little to alleviate their longstanding hardships.

Despite their Israeli citizenship, they feel underrepresented, neglected and that their plight has even worsened as the war grinds on.

“We hold the Israeli passport and Israeli ID card. We live in this country and respect the law, so we must be treated the same way Jews are treated,” he said.

Xi Jinping had a clear aim as he hosted delegates from more than 50 African countries for a major summit in Beijing this week: proving beyond doubt that China is the continent’s premier foreign partner.

The Chinese leader made his case with ceremony on Thursday when, flanked by dozens of African leaders and the UN secretary general in the Great Hall of the People, he vowed to elevate ties between China and the continent to an “all-weather community with a shared future” – a status that Beijing reserves for its staunchest diplomatic allies.

He also made a raft of promises to the continent, to be fulfilled over the next three years: more than $50 billion in financial support; the creation of one million jobs; tens of millions in food and military aid – while vowing to “deepen cooperation with Africa in industry, agriculture, infrastructure, trade and investment.”

Leaders including South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, Kenya’s William Ruto and Nigeria’s Bola Tinubu assembled in the Chinese capital this week for the three-day forum that Beijing hailed as its largest diplomatic gathering in years.

Xi’s bid to African governments comes as China appears to be reining in its previously free-flowing funding for Africa’s development – amid its own economic slowdown and criticism its lending there had helped to saddle countries with unsustainable debt.

Now, other powers like the United States are ramping up their own efforts to boost ties with the resource-rich continent, as they seek to counter China’s political influence and secure access to critical resources key to powering the green energy transition.

The three-yearly forum on China-Africa cooperation, which wrapped Friday, was a key opportunity for Xi and his officials to telegraph their commitment to the continent, whose backing has only grown in importance for Beijing in the face of its mounting friction with the West.

Here are the main takeaways from Xi’s pitch to the continent this week.

End of the infrastructure drive?

Xi and Chinese officials appeared keen to show that Chinese investment, including in African infrastructure, was not over – even as data show Chinese lending for Africa’s development and big-ticket infrastructure has fallen substantially in recent years.

The Chinese leader announced a commitment to back 30 infrastructure connectivity projects across unspecified countries and ambitions for “a network of land-sea links.” He said China would launch 30 clean energy projects, seen as part of a push from Beijing to make Africa’s market a destination for its green tech like solar panels and electric vehicles that now face tariffs in the US and Europe.

Deals cut in a procession of bilateral meetings this week also included infrastructure. China, Zambia and Tanzania inked a memorandum of understanding to “revitalize” the existing Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority line on Wednesday, and Nigeria and China referenced developing the West African country’s “transportation, ports and free trade zones,” in a joint statement.

However, such projects and China’s overall pledge of roughly $50 billion in financial support for the continent, while heftier than that of the last forum in 2021, was still less robust than those of the previous decade, observers said.

“It is not insignificant, but if you look at the details, it is not as striking as it used to be,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington, noting that this amount would be spread across many countries and a number of areas of cooperation from health to green technology.

“It also means the funding for hard infrastructure will be reduced across the board. There might be a few major projects, but the more funding they take, the less there will be for other things,” she said.

African country leaders had arrived in China seeking seeking investment, trade, and support industrializing their raw commodity sectors to create jobs. They are expected to be closely watching for follow-through on Beijing’s wide-ranging promises in the coming years, with analysts saying fulfillment of past commitments have been difficult to track.

A debt crisis loomed large

This year’s gathering also played out under the shadow of a debt crisis across a number of African countries, which have struggled under heavy foreign debt, including from Chinese loans, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic – and raised questions about China’s role in fueling the issue.

Analysts have largely debunked earlier “debt trap” claims that Beijing was purposefully seeking to indebt countries in order to gain leverage over their assets, as it lent toward the construction of highways, rail lines and power plants across Africa under Xi’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative.

African leaders have also pushed back on the premise while in Beijing, with South Africa’s Ramaphosa rejecting the “notion that when China (invests), it is with an intention of, in the end, ensuring that those countries end up in a debt trap or in a debt crisis” in comments to reporters.

China is also not seen by observers to be the main cause of African debt distress in most cases, with debt to its lenders making up a comparatively small portion of the continent’s overall public debt.

But the influx of Chinese loans increased the debt burden, and while Beijing has defended its lending practices and its efforts to ease debt repayment, observers suggest it has moved too slowly or been inflexible in cases helping countries that are heavily indebted to it get relief.

These realities – along with China’s own economic slowdown – are seen to have reduced its appetite for such lending. Even before the pandemic, Chinese lenders had already been slashing funding for the big-scale infrastructure projects and touting a transition to so-called “small yet beautiful” investments, with smaller budgets and environmental or social impact.

Xi highlighted such projects while laying out Beijing’s plan for supporting the region in the coming years, but did not address the debt shouldered by countries in his public remarks.

Competing visions

Instead, the Chinese leader reached back into history to paint the West as the driver of challenges both for China and for Africa – part of what observers say is Beijing’s effort to portray the continent as firmly on its side when it comes to its broader geopolitical rivalry with the US.

China, Africa and other developing nations have for decades “been endeavoring to redress the historical injustices” of Western modernization, Xi told visiting delegations, in an apparent allusion to colonialism and exploitative practices in centuries past.

Now, Xi predicted, China would, along with African countries, “set off a wave of modernization in the Global South.”

Analysts say Beijing sees the continent’s backing as crucial to Xi’s aim of positioning China as a champion of the Global South – and an alternative global leader to the US.

Playing up that backing was also a likely motivation behind China’s elevation of diplomatic ties with attending African countries to a “strategic” level and its designation of the “all-weather China-Africa community with a shared future for the new era,” observers say.

The US and its Group of Seven (G7) allies have launched their own effort to fund infrastructure in developing countries, with US officials saying African countries should have “choices” when it comes to their partnerships.

Noting that “more countries” were increasing attention on ties with African nations, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday said Beijing “welcomes” such support for the continent – as long as it’s not done with a “condescending approach.”

Visiting leaders at the summit also rebuffed the idea of competition defining the relationship. Speaking on the summit’s sidelines, Senegal’s Foreign Minister Yassine Fall said that there would always be global competition, but noted that “Africans today are saying that China is on our side.”

African country leaders, however, are unlikely to be willing to choose between Washington and Beijing.

“Overall (at the forum), the African side created the impression that China remains pivotal,” said Paul Nantulya, a senior China specialist at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington.

“But this does not mean that they will ditch the US and others. They clearly do not want to isolate themselves from opportunities and multiple engagements and partnerships,” he said.

Brazil’s Center for Research and Prevention of Aeronautical Accidents (Cenipa) said on Friday that a preliminary report into the August crash of a Voepass airliner showed icing detectors had been activated on the ATR aircraft.

According to a Cenipa official, the plane’s airframe icing button was activated at least three times during the flight, while cockpit recordings showed the copilot said there was “a lot of icing.”

The ATR-72 aircraft from local carrier Voepass swirled out of control before plunging to the ground on Aug. 9, killing all 62 on board.

Cenipa said that the copilot’s comment indicated that the plane’s de-icing system might have failed, but said that still needed to be confirmed.

According to Cenipa, investigations into the crash will probably last for over a year.

The preliminary report on the crash confirmed that the pilots had repeatedly turned the airframe de-icing system on and off.

The report gives a timeline of the flight but does not present clear causes.

“That is consistent with the flight crew being aware of airframe icing and them trying to deal with it using systems on board the aircraft,” said Anthony Brickhouse, a U.S. aviation safety expert.

The turboprop, bound for Sao Paulo’s international airport, had taken off from Cascavel, in the state of Parana and crashed in the town of Vinhedo, some 80 km (50 miles) northwest of Sao Paulo.

In-flight icing can “distort the flow of air over the wing and adversely affect handling qualities,” according to Federal Aviation Administration documents, triggering an airplane to “roll or pitch uncontrollably, and recovery may be impossible.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Marathoner Rebecca Cheptegei ran in the Paris Olympics last month. This week, her boyfriend doused her with gasoline and set her ablaze, police said — the third horrific killing of an Olympian in Kenya in recent years.

In the past three years, two other female Olympians have been killed in Iten, Kenya, about 70 miles away from where Cheptegei died. The women were killed by their significant others, authorities said, bringing international attention to a pattern of domestic violence against female athletes who live and train in Kenya’s Rift Valley region, home to some of the world’s most elite runners.

In October 2021, the body of Agnes Tirop, a rising star in distance running, was found inside her home with numerous stab wounds. She was in her running gear — a black sports bra and shorts — and likely going to a training session when her husband attacked her, authorities said.

About six months later, marathoner Damaris Mutua’s boyfriend allegedly strangled her and left a pillow over her face. He fled the country after the attack and has been a fugitive ever since, according to police.

Tirop’s husband was arrested in the coastal city of Mombasa as he allegedly tried to leave the country, the Kenyan Directorate of Criminal Investigations said at the time. He’s free on bail and his case is ongoing. He pleaded not guilty to murder but admitted to killing Tirop in an affidavit requesting bail, according to court documents.

And as yet another killing stuns the nation’s running community, activists and officials are calling for more action and resources in the ongoing fight against domestic violence.

“We must do more to combat gender-based violence in our society, which in recent years has reared its ugly head in elite sporting circles,” Kenya’s sports minister Kipchumba Murkomen said in a statement.

Deaths of female athletes spark outrage and calls for action

Cheptegei ran for Uganda, but trained in Kenya. Her father told local media that she bought land in Trans Nzoia and built a house to be near the hub of long distance training. His daughter and her boyfriend were fighting over the land shortly before the attack, Joseph Cheptegei said.

Her boyfriend, who was also burned, is being treated at a hospital in the city of Eldoret.

The deaths of the female athletes have sparked outrage and reignited calls for more action against domestic abuse. In 2022, a group of female athletes in the region formed Tirop’s Angels to educate runners about gender-based violence and engage Kenyan men and leaders on prevention efforts.

“We started Tirop’s Angels out of emotions, we were heartbroken,” Chelimo said. “We realized that female athletes are suffering, and they’re silent. They needed to know they’re not alone, and they have rights, too.”

After Cheptegei’s death, Tirop’s Angels said it was devastated to mourn yet another loss in the running community.

“Another talented athlete taken from us by the menace of gender-based violence,” the group said in a statement Thursday. “This ongoing violence must not be ignored.”

Wealth and fame make young female runners more vulnerable

All three women were working to make a mark as elite runners.

Cheptegei finished 44th in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics. Tirop had just returned from a race in Switzerland and had broken the women’s 10km record in Germany a month before she was killed. Mutua, who had just placed third at a half marathon in Angola days before her death, was a bronze medalist at the 2010 Singapore Youth Olympics.

Iten and its surrounding regions are revered training grounds for long-distance runners due to their crisp air and high altitude. Success in races overseas can mean brand sponsorships, stipends, performance bonuses and sometimes paid travel expenses for races — resources that allow runners to participate in international competitions.

This makes domestic violence especially prevalent in running communities in the region, said Chelimo, a long-distance runner who also trains in the area.

A mix of (potential) wealth, fame and a patriarchal culture — where a man is expected to be the breadwinner — leaves young, ambitious women either prey to unscrupulous men trying to get their hands on their future earnings or vulnerable to intimate partners who wish to control them, she said.

Tirop was 25, Mutua was 28 and Cheptegei was 33.

“We (society) don’t protect these young women … we don’t even give them training (to advocate for themselves) … we just expect them to run and break records. Where is the outrage? Where is the anger?” said Njeri Migwi, founder of Usikimye, an organization that provides refuge to victims of sexual- and gender-based violence across Kenya.

As part of its education efforts, Tirop’s Angels brings in experts to help young runners live well-rounded lives and provides them with tips on financial literacy, investments and relationship red flags.

But it acknowledges that a major cultural shift is needed in the region for real change to happen. The group said it’s working with local schools to educate children on forms of abuse and ensure that future generations of runners learn crucial lessons at a young age.

Domestic abuse in the region is rooted in patriarchy, an expert says

The root cause of sexual and gender-based violence in Kenya is the country’s entrenched patriarchy, which is more dominant in remote rural regions, Migwi said.

In Kenya, according to government data from 2022, more than one-third of women ages 15 to 49 have experienced physical violence by a husband, intimate partner or someone else. Married women are much more likely to have been victims of violence than those who have never been married (41% versus 20%), according to the survey.

But domestic violence is a worldwide problem.

A review of data from 2000 to 2018, covering girls and women aged 15 to 49 in 161 countries, found that 27% of ever-partnered women have experienced domestic violence.

In the United States, one in four women have experienced severe violence by a domestic partner, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Advocacy groups have described the murder of US women by men they know as “a silent epidemic.”

An American activist has been shot and killed during a protest near Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian officials.

The Palestinian news agency WAFA said the activist was shot in the head during a protest in Beita, near Nablus, on Friday. She was taken to hospital, where she was pronounced dead, WAFA reported.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Residents of Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, are taking stock after nine days of what they say has been the most intense and sustained Israeli military operation in their city since October 7.

Witnesses describe it as a Gaza-style campaign, with widespread destruction of infrastructure, severed water and electricity supplies, and people rationing food for fear of going outside. It has been the deadliest period in the West Bank since November, according to the UN.

The military withdrew from Jenin and Tulkarem on Friday, according to residents. But an Israeli security source said that “the overall operation in Jenin is not over, it is only a pause.”

Though the war in Gaza has attracted most attention, Israel’s military has persistently and increasingly brought unsparing military tactics to the West Bank.

Israel’s security forces on August 28 launched what they dubbed a “counterterrorism operation” in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas, in the northern West Bank. It has come to be known as Operation Summer Camps.

“We will not let terrorism in Judea and Samaria raise its head,” the head of the Israel Defense Forces, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, said during a visit to Jenin over the weekend, using the biblical names for the West Bank commonly used in Israel.

Residents say Jenin has been left transformed and scarred.

“It felt like Gaza,” 36-year-old Lina Al Amouri said by telephone from Jenin. She and her husband fled several days into the IDF incursion, but went back when they heard rumors that the operation had quieted.

“When we returned yesterday, we saw that all the streets were destroyed,” she said. “Soldiers were everywhere, continuing to bulldoze everything around them, not just the streets.”

“We heard many gunshots, and then we received news that my mother-in-law’s nephew had been shot seven times near the camp. They let him bleed until he died and prevented ambulances from reaching him.”

The IDF has previously said that it often must impede ambulances to check for militants.

Eight children killed

Nearly 700 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah and the UN, whose figures do not distinguish between militants and civilians.

Since the Israeli operation began last Wednesday, 39 Palestinians have been killed, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah reported. Among them were at least nine militants, according to public statements from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Eight children have also been killed according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

He left home on Friday to get food and attend Friday prayers. On his way back, Arafat said, he was gunned down in the street, where he lay for hours as he bled out.

The Israeli military has severely restricted access to the city since its operation began, so international media have had to rely on residents, local journalists, and social media video for independent information about the operation.

Journalists this week said that they were fired on by the Israeli military during a raid in Kafr Dan, near Jenin. Mohammed Mansour, a journalist for WAFA, was injured when the car he was driving was struck by gunfire, according to video of the aftermath and his employer.

Armored bulldozers also daily used heavy duty plows to tear up roads. The military says this is necessary to unearth improvised explosive devices planted under the tarmac. But the tactic has caused significant infrastructure damage, leaving many roads impassable.

The UN says that since October, Israeli authorities have “destroyed, demolished, confiscated, or forced the demolition” of 1,478 structures in the West Bank. Jenin’s mayor said that more than 70% of his city’s critical infrastructure has been destroyed.

While deadly ground raids in the West Bank were a regular occurrence before Hamas’ brutal October 7 attack, air strikes – though not entirely unheard of – were extremely rare. When in July 2023 Israel used a drone to launch airstrikes as part of a large operation in Jenin, it made headlines around the world. Not a single Palestinian in the West bank was killed by an air strike in the preceding three years, according to the UN.

‘Don’t play with us’

Since October, such strikes have become a near-daily occurrence. And their use has dramatically ramped up in recent weeks. The UN says that of all deaths by Israeli air strikes since October, nearly a third came in August alone.

“No place in Palestine is safe, not just Gaza,” Health Minister Majed Abu Ramadan said during a visit to Jenin on Thursday – the first time a Palestinian official visited the city since Israel’s operation began. “We witness the occupying enemy repeating the systematic destruction I saw before, targeting both human life and infrastructure.”

Brigadier General Nitzan Nuriel, who ran the counter-terrorism bureau of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office until 2012, and now serves in the reserves, said that Operation Summer Camps was launched to send a message to Israel’s adversaries.

“The message to the other side is, ‘Don’t play with us. Don’t think that if we are very much down in the south and probably we are going to be busy up in the north, we will not be able to take care of what’s going in Judea and Samaria.’”

The Israeli military, Halevi said during his visit to Jenin, will go “city to city, camp to camp, with excellent intelligence, very good operational capabilities, very strong aerial intelligence support, and above all, with very moral and determined soldiers and commanders.”

Duha Turkman, 18 years old, sheltered with her sister at an aunt’s house for a week when the operation began, too scared to go outside because of the Israeli snipers they saw on surrounding rooftops.

“We tried to conserve food as much as we could,” she said. “We were eating very little, had no water, and no electricity.”

Suddenly, on the seventh day, Israeli soldiers burst through their door, she said. A video taken by Turkman shows shrapnel pockmarking the stairwell of the house. They soon fled to an uncle’s house elsewhere in the city.

“When we look at Gaza, we realize that we have been going through this for nine days, and it is already incredibly difficult for us,” she said. “We can only imagine what the people in Gaza are enduring. The situation here mirrors Gaza with airstrikes, bulldozing, and it doesn’t seem like the situation will change anytime soon.”