More than 24 million people in southern Africa face hunger, malnutrition and water scarcity due to drought and floods, an aid group has warned, as experts say the situation risks spiraling into an “unimaginable humanitarian situation.”

The warning from Oxfam on Wednesday came as Zimbabwe joined other southern African nations in declaring its drought a national disaster, following earlier declarations by Zambia and Malawi.

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa said more than 2.7 million people in the country will go hungry this year and more than $2 billion in aid is required for the country’s national response, Reuters reported.

The country’s top priority “is securing food for all Zimbabweans,” the president told journalists at the state house in Harare. “No Zimbabwean must succumb to, or die from, hunger.”

The drought has been fueled by El Niño, a natural climate pattern originating in the Pacific Ocean along the equator, which tends to bring high temperatures and low rainfall to this part of Africa. When it does rain, dried-out ground is unable to absorb the moisture, making flooding more likely.

El Niño is exacerbating the impacts of the climate crisis, caused primarily by burning fossil fuels, which is driving more frequent and severe weather — including drought and floods — across southern Africa, a region Oxfam describes as a “climate disaster hotspot.”

As southern Africa enters its traditional dry season this month, vast parts of the region — including Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe — have already been grappling with a prolonged dry spell.

From late January to February, rainfall levels were the lowest in at least 40 years, a recent report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs revealed.

Central parts of the region experienced the driest February in more than 100 years, according to a report by the United States Agency for International Development’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

In Zambia, Malawi and Central Mozambique, extreme drought has damaged more than 2 million hectares of crops, Oxfam said.

Zambia declared its drought a disaster on February 29.

Malawi’s president declared a state of disaster across the majority of the country on March 23. It’s the fourth consecutive year the country has been forced to do this due to the impact of extreme weather conditions. The World Food Programme said this week the El Niño impact is “exacerbating the devastating effects of the climate crisis in Malawi.”

Southern Africa is particularly vulnerable to climate change despite being responsible for only a tiny portion of global planet-heating pollution.

In Mozambique — a country accounting for only 0.2% of global emissions — 3 million people face hunger, according to Oxfam. The country’s capital, Maputo, experienced devastating floods in March, after Tropical Storm Filipo hit followed a few weeks later by further intense rainfall.

“It is so deeply unjust that climate change impacts are hammering Mozambique over and over again. One of the poorest countries in the world is carrying the costs of the climate crisis it has done little to cause and is being pushed deeper into debt and spiralling poverty,” Teresa Anderson, ActionAid’s International Climate Justice Lead, said last week following the flooding.

“Wealthy polluting countries need to own up to their responsibility for the damage they are doing through climate change and be willing to provide climate finance so that vulnerable communities can cope with the climate disasters that are being unleashed,” she added.

Oxfam’s southern Africa program director, Machinda Marongwe, said the region is “in crisis” and called on donors to “immediately release resources” to prevent the spiral into an “unimaginable humanitarian situation.”

“With all these countries facing multiple crises simultaneously, the urgency cannot be overstated,” Marongwe said.

More and more people are going hungry in Haiti, warn aid workers, doctors and missionaries with increasing urgency, as the Caribbean nation struggles to find its way out of political deadlock and an epidemic of deadly gang violence.

In some areas of the city, there is no more food to buy, and none to bring to market for those whose livelihoods depend on small-scale trading, said the missionary, who requested anonymity for his own safety. “One by one, items disappear for good. There’s no supply chain, so when flour, sugar, salt, rice etc. run out, they’re out.”

Following the resignation announcement of Prime Minister Ariel Henry last month, the country’s political leaders have not yet formed a new government, and a long-awaited multinational security mission has stalled amid the confusion. Meanwhile, gangs have cut off Port-au-Prince from the rest of the world, making it “virtually impossible” for help to reach at least 58,000 children suffering from the most dangerous levels of malnutrition, according to UNICEF.

The crisis in the capital can be felt across the country, which depends heavily on imports brought through Port-au-Prince. According to the United Nations, nearly 5 million people in Haiti are suffering from acute food insecurity – defined as when a person’s inability to consume adequate food poses immediate danger to their lives or livelihoods.

‘This malnutrition crisis is entirely human-made’

For the past two months, Port-au-Prince has been cut off from the world, its resources dwindling. Roads leading in and out of the city have been blocked by gangs, and the city’s international airport and port have been similarly shuttered. Hospitals have been vandalized, and warehouses and containers storing food and essential supplies across the city have been broken into in recent weeks as the social fabric frays.

Last month, a key container terminal – critical to Haiti’s food import supply chain – was attacked and looted. A UNICEF container carrying essential items for the survival of newborn babies and their mothers – including resuscitators and other critical supplies, as well as water equipment – was also broken into, the children’s agency said.

“Thousands of children are on the brink, while life-saving supplies are ready to be delivered if violence stops and roads and hospitals are opened. This malnutrition crisis is entirely human-made,” said Catherine Russell, UNICEF Executive Director, in March.

Dr. Ralph Ternier, chief medical officer of medical organization Zanmi Lasante, says he’s seen some of the worst cases of child hunger in his career recently while working at the organization’s medical facility in Mirebalais – about an hour drive northeast from the capital.

He knows the problem is far worse in Port-au-Prince, but laments that there is no way to reach those children. Ternier compared the capital to another country, explaining that it is nearly impossible for someone like him to enter the area, and that rampant gang attacks and kidnapping means many Port-au-Prince parents cannot find medical care for their kids.

“If you have a child that is malnourished, and you are in Port-au-Prince, you cannot do much. It’s rare to find a decent hospital to go to because a lot of them have been destroyed,” Ternier says

‘We’re completely cut off from all supplies’

In Haiti’s rural Lower Artibonite Valley, north of the capital, Hopital Albert Schweitzer is seeing an unprecedented number of acute malnutrition cases, especially among children.

The hospital normally sees seasonal spikes in malnutrition cases, but now, community healthcare workers are seeing malnutrition in much larger numbers, especially among children, during regular clinic visits, he said.

Further fueling fears of hunger in the country, farmers from Artibonite – known as the breadbasket of Haiti because of its fertile lands and rice fields – are struggling to grow and sell their crops amid the insecurity. A March 15 analysis by the World Food Programme (WFP) found shrinking food production, with farmers saying they are afraid to go into the fields as bandits steal their crops.

The Artibonite department alone has seen approximately 100 armed attacks over the past two years — the country’s second-highest number of such violence incidents after Port-au-Prince.

“Conflict and hunger are closely linked,” Laure Boudinaud, Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping Officer for WFP in Haiti said. “In an essentially agricultural country like Haiti, when production zones are abandoned, the population suffers one way or another.”

“The correlation between abandoned farm fields and the presence of armed groups and violence is clearly evident,” she added.

Food stocks heading to ‘zero’ amid donor funding shortfalls

Humanitarians are racing to fill the gaps in Haiti under difficult conditions. Bauer, the WFP head, said his agency reached about a half million people in the country with food assistance last month.

“We would like to do more for some of our programs, but overall, we’ve been successful at reaching the people who are in the most need, we’ve been prioritizing, and that’s worked out for us,” he said.

But the WFP won’t be able to continue its feeding programs in Port-au-Prince for long given the current supply chain issues – the agency only has a few weeks left of food in the city, according to Bauer.

“What we’re doing right now is drawing down on our existing food stocks. These are the stocks we’re distributing to vulnerable neighborhoods and hot meals to displaced people,” he said.

“It will last for a few weeks and we will be down to zero if we don’t reopen the port and get more imports.”

Shortfalls in donor funding are also complicating efforts to help the country’s most vulnerable. The United Nations’ 2024 Humanitarian Response Plan has only received 6.5% of its required funding. Current funding for the WFP in Haiti also has a long way to go, according to Bauer.

“Between now and over the next six months, we require $100 million in order to keep our program going and this is one of the reasons why you’re not seeing larger numbers (of aid recipients reached) – the funding is not not there,” he said.

“People have been focusing on other issues right now — and that’s understandable,” Bauer added. “But you’re not going to have a Haiti at peace with half of its population not knowing where its next meal is coming from.”

Lin Qi, a billionaire fan of “The Three-Body Problem,” had big plans to bring his favorite Chinese sci-fi novel to TV, cinema and video-game screens across the world.

Flush with cash after the listing of his gaming company in 2014, the young entrepreneur envisioned turning China’s most beloved sci-fi trilogy into a global pop culture phenomenon in the same league as “Star Wars.”

A decade on, Lin would have been a step closer to achieving his dream when a Netflix adaptation of the Hugo Award-winning book drew millions of viewers worldwide – but the billionaire who helped make the show happen never lived to see it.

Lin, who was named as an executive producer in the opening credits of “3 Body Problem,” was poisoned and killed at age 39, according to Chinese authorities, months after Netflix announced its plans to produce the series in 2020.

The culprit was one of Lin’s own executives, a high-flying lawyer who helped Lin’s Yoozoo Games secure the rights to adapt the highly acclaimed trilogy.

After falling out with his boss, Xu Yao gifted Lin a bottle of what he said were probiotic pills, but which contained a cocktail of lethal toxins he bought off the dark web.

Media reports of the meticulously planned murder have gripped China, where it has drawn comparisons online to the American crime drama “Breaking Bad.” According to Chinese media outlets, it involved the mixing and testing of more than a hundred poisons in a makeshift suburban lab.

Xu was sentenced to death for murder by a court in Shanghai on March 22 – the day after the much-anticipated debut of “3 Body Problem” on Netflix.

To Chinese tech entrepreneurs and fans of the books, the dramatically timed sentence served as a poignant reminder of the loss of a rising star in China’s once vibrant internet industry – and a pivotal figure in the making of one of China’s most successful pop culture exports.

Meticulous scheme

On a winter evening in 2020, Lin was driving home from Yoozoo Games headquarters in Shanghai when he suddenly felt unwell. He checked himself in to the hospital and initially recovered to a stable condition, but died 10 days later on Christmas Day, according to his company.

At least five toxins were detected in Lin’s body, including mercury and tetrodotoxin – an extremely potent poison found in pufferfish, Chinese financial magazine Caixin reported, citing people close to the video game tycoon.

Xu was identified as a key suspect and swiftly detained, according to a police statement at the time.

In its ruling last month, the Shanghai court said Xu had a dispute with Lin over “company management matters” and plotted to poison his boss through edible items over two days. Xu also poisoned beverages in the offices of two executives he had disputes with, causing four colleagues to fall sick, the court said. (The four survived.)

In the months following Lin’s death, Chinese media outlets pieced together a more detailed – and chilling – account of the murder, which involved meticulous planning that lasted months.

Xu was a huge fan of “Breaking Bad,” an American series about a chemistry teacher who goes into the meth-making business after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, according to Caixin, citing people close to the company.

He set up a lab in a suburb of Shanghai and bought more than a hundred toxins on the dark web to experiment with, often testing mixed poisons on cats, dogs and other pet animals. He then made the lethal substances into a pill, gifting the “probiotic pills” to Lin, Caixin reported.

According to Phoenix News, a Chinese news outlet, Xu held 160 cellphone numbers and set up a trading company in Japan to acquire hazardous chemicals, including the substances he used to poison his colleagues.

Between September and December 2020, Xu swapped the coffee capsules, whiskey and bottled water in the offices of two executives with replacements injected with methylmercury chloride, an acute toxic that can be fatal if swallowed, inhaled or touched, Caixin reported last month, citing court documents.

Falling out

The Shanghai court did not give details on the rift between Xu and Lin, but according to Chinese media reports citing sources in the company, it revolved around Lin’s ambition to adapt “The Three-Body Problem,” part of a trilogy by China’s most celebrated sci-fi author, Liu Cixin.

Lin had long wanted to develop the Three-Body IP into a global cultural franchise, but the rights for adaptations of the books were held by a Chinese business couple who bought them from the author in 2009.

Lin’s determination to secure the rights only hardened after a years-long collaboration with the couple to make a film adaptation fell by the wayside.

In 2017, Xu, an established lawyer educated in France and the United States with a decade of experience working at a Chinese multinational conglomerate, was brought in by Lin to solve the stumbling block.

Xu successfully secured the rights for adaptations. The following year, he was appointed to spearhead a Yoozoo subsidiary, The Three-Body Universe, tasked with developing the Three-Body IP.

But Xu’s performance failed to impress Lin. Soon, he was sidelined, with key projects handed to another executive, Zhao Jilong, one of the executives who would later have his drinks poisoned by Xu, according to Caixin.

Zhao was found to be chronically poisoned, with the mercury concentration in his body exceeding 10 times the safe level, the report said.

Xu’s annual pay was cut from 20 million yuan ($2.76 million) a year when he first joined Yoozoo to around 5 million yuan, according to Phoenix News.

When Netflix announced its adaptation project of “The Three-Body Problem” in September 2020, Lin and Zhao were listed as executive producers, with Xu’s name conspicuously missing.

Yoozoo staff told Caixin the Netflix deal was struck by Lin and a number of young employees. “Xu Yao’s contribution was almost zero,” a source close to Lin was quoted as saying. “Perhaps it was from then that Lin had planned to no longer use Xu Yao.”

In an interview published in November 2020, Xu touted his key role in Yoozoo’s acquisition of the Three-Body copyrights.

“We legal professionals are here to put out fires, break up the deadlock, and must have the courage to be the change maker,” he was quoted as saying.

It would later transpire that at that time, Xu was already planning an act that would forever change his fate, and that of Lin.

A month before Lin’s death, the tycoon told an interviewer that the Three-Body project had the potential to be his life’s legacy, and would likely be on his mind when he said “goodbye to the world when I’m 90 years old.”

“It is said that your mind will be hit by a moment of extreme clarity when you are about to die… So I’m very afraid that what I’ll be thinking before I die is: How did I destroy ‘The Three-Body Problem?”

After apologizing last month for a new relationship that angered some particularly animated fans, K-pop star Karina is once again single – highlighting the long-standing challenges of dating in the fervid fanspace of Korean entertainment.

Karina, of the girl group Aespa, and actor Lee Jae-wook have broken up after going public five weeks ago, according to South Korean news agency Yonhap, citing statements from the pair’s respective representatives.

Lee’s agency, C-JeS Studios, said he had ended the relationship to focus on work, “leaving them as colleagues who support each other,” Yonhap reported.

The agencies had confirmed their relationship in late February – a rare instance of K-pop singers publicly dating in an industry where stars, known as idols, face heavy scrutiny and pressure from some fans.

Karina came under fire after the news broke – with some fans sending a truck with an electronic billboard to the headquarters of Karina’s agency, according to the Chosun Ilbo newspaper. “Do you not get enough love from your fans?” it read. “Why did you choose to betray your fans?”

“Please apologize directly. Otherwise, you’ll see declining album sales and empty concert seats,” it added.

Shortly after, Karina did so with a handwritten letter posted on Instagram, apologizing to her supporters and vowing to “show more maturity and work harder going forward to all (my fans) without disappointment.”

Not all fans were upset – many expressed support for Karina and Lee, arguing that stars deserve to have private lives and personal relationships as well.

But that wasn’t always the case. In the past, K-pop stars who went public with their relationships have faced heavy public backlash, sometimes impacting their professional careers and contracts. As a result, record labels have long imposed strict rules on their stars, limiting their ability to date publicly – and promoting the fantasy of accessible, unhitched celebrities.

There have been some signs of change in recent years, with attitudes slowly shifting among both fans and agencies. Notably, the agencies of Blackpink singer Jisoo and actor Ahn Bo-hyun confirmed last year that they were dating.

But as the billboard incident showed, the taboo lingers – and though Karina and Lee’s statements made no mention of the controversy, fans were quick to blame the incident for the end of the relationship.

“I’m truly disappointed and I don’t understand why two people who love each other should separate because of fans. Your private life is nobody’s business except the parties involved. This is truly disgusting,” read one top comment under Karina’s most recent Instagram post this week.

Another commenter wrote: “The next time you’re dating someone you are NOT posting an apology!!”

At least 29 people have died in a blaze which started during daytime repair work at a nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey, state media reported Tuesday.

A further eight people were injured, with seven of those in serious condition, the Istanbul governor’s office said.

The governor’s office said the fire started in the Besiktas district in central Istanbul on the European side of the city, and that all of the victims were construction workers.

The blaze started during renovations at the site, which is located underground, says Anadolu, the Turkish news state agency.

Turkish authorities have detained eight people in connection with the fire, including the business manager of the nightclub, its accountant and partners, as well as the person responsible for the metal workers related to the renovation, TRT News reported.

Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said authorities were collecting evidence from the site.

“A team of 3 experts specializing in occupational safety and fire is also continuing their work to determine the cause of the fire,” he wrote on X.

Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, sent his condolences on social media.

“May God have mercy on our citizens who lost their lives,” he wrote on X.

Imamoglu, of the opposition Republic People’s Party (CHP), was re-elected as mayor on Sunday in local elections that marked the biggest election defeat to date for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development (AK) Party.

Umut Sevdi Tangör in Istanbul contributed to this report.

Ancient glass sponges. A Barbie-pink sea pig sauntering along the seafloor. A transparent unicumber hovering in the depths.

These wonders are just an initial snapshot of fantastic creatures discovered 1,640 miles (5,000 meters) beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean in a pristine area that’s earmarked as a site for deep-sea mining of critical and rare metals. The natural resources are in high demand for use in solar panels, electric car batteries and other green technologies, among other uses.

The 45-day expedition to the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, which wrapped March 20, documented biodiversity in the abyssal plain. Using a remotely operated vehicle, the team on board the UK research ship James Cook photographed the deep-sea life and took samples for future study.

“We can assume that many of these species will be new to science. Sometimes they have been seen/observed/known before, but not collected or formally described,” said Regen Drennan, a postdoctoral marine biologist at London’s Natural History Museum.

“These specimens will be brought to the NHM London to be identified and studied for years to come.”

The voyage was the second conducted by a UK initiative known as the Seabed Mining and Resilience to Experimental Impact, or SMARTEX, project, involving the Natural History Museum, National Oceanography Centre, British Geological Survey and other institutions.

The US Geological Survey estimates that 21.1 billion dry tons of polymetallic nodules exist in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone — containing more reserves of many critical metals than the world’s land-based reserves combined.

If deep-sea mining follows the same trajectory as offshore oil production, more than one-third of these critical metals will come from deep-ocean mines by 2065, the federal agency estimated.

Scientists believe many of the life-forms that call this environment home would be unlikely to recover from the removal of the nodules and are calling for protections, according to the Natural History Museum.

Weighing biodiversity and industry

In international waters, the Clarion-Clipperton Zone is beyond the jurisdiction of any one country. The International Seabed Authority, under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, has issued 17 exploration contracts. However, several countries, including the United Kingdom and France, have expressed caution, supporting a moratorium or ban on deep-sea mining to safeguard marine ecosystems and conserve biodiversity.

Some 6,000 to 8,000 species could be waiting to be discovered in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, according to a June 2023 study published in the journal Current Biology.

The pink amperima sea cucumber, nicknamed the “Barbie pig,” is one of the largest invertebrates living on the deep-sea floor. Along with the transparent unicumber, the creature is a type of sea pig within the scientific family called Elpidiidae. The Barbie pig grazes upon the small amounts of detritus that descend from surface waters to the seabed and are important in terms of cycling organic matter, explained Drennan, who wasn’t directly involved in the expedition.

“Many species in this family have developed long stout legs that allow them to walk across the seafloor, and elongated mouthparts to pick and choose the detritus they feed on,” Drennan said via email.

The expedition also captured images of elegant, cup-shaped glass sponges, which are thought to have the longest life span of any creature on the planet — up to 15,000 years, although the expedition team doesn’t know how old the sponges they photographed are.

Sea anemones, close relatives of jellyfish, “fill the role of large sit-and-wait carnivores on the deep sea floor, catching small swimming animals in their tentacles,” she added.

Many of the life-forms that live in these depths are reliant on the polymetallic nodules, which form ever so gradually through chemical processes that cause metals to precipitate out of water around shell fragments and shark teeth, according to the Natural History Museum.

Researchers estimate that it takes roughly 1 million years for these nodules to grow just tens of millimeters in size. The largest known nodules reach around 8 inches (20 centimeters) across, which suggests that these environments have remained virtually unchanged at the bottom of the ocean for tens of millions of years.

Critics say that noise could disrupt marine mammals such as whales and dolphins, while plumes of sediment, potentially containing toxic compounds, kicked up by equipment on the seabed may disperse, harming midwater ecosystems, according to recent research.

It’s also possible, these scientists warn, that deep-sea mining could disrupt the way carbon is stored in the ocean, contributing to the climate crisis.

The Palestinian Authority is again requesting membership in the United Nations, according to a post on X from the Palestinian permanent observer mission to the UN on Tuesday.

“Today, the State of Palestine, and upon instructions of the Palestinian leadership, sent a letter to the Secretary General requesting renewed consideration to (our) membership application,” the post read.

The post included a letter, signed by UN Ambassador of the Palestinian Territories Riyad Mansour, which referenced an initial September 2011 application for membership status and requested renewed consideration this month.

In September 2011, the Palestinian Authority failed to win UN recognition as an independent member state. A year later, the UN decided that the Palestinian Authority’s “non-member observer entity” status would be changed to “non-member observer state,” similar to the Vatican.

The Palestinian Authority, which is dominated by the Fatah political party, held administrative control over Gaza until 2007, after Hamas won the 2006 legislative elections in the occupied territories and expelled it from the strip. Since then, Hamas has ruled Gaza and the Palestinian Authority governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The US favors a reformed Palestinian Authority leading both the West Bank and Gaza as part of an eventual independent state. But Israel has rejected the prospect of the Palestinian Authority returning to Gaza after the ongoing war, and has dismissed the idea of establishing a Palestinian state in the territories.

Amid intense international pressure for the Palestinian Authority to reform, a new cabinet led by Prime Minister Dr. Mohammed Mustafa was officially sworn in on Sunday in Ramallah, according to Palestinian official news agency WAFA.

“Our political goal is to achieve freedom, independence and liberation from the occupation, and we are working with concerned Arab and international parties to obtain full membership in the United Nations,” Abbas said during a meeting with the new government, according to WAFA.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Eight Chinese migrants have been found dead on the coast of southern Mexico, authorities said, after their boat capsized along a popular but perilous route for illegally entering the United States.

The bodies of the seven women and one man were discovered Friday on a beach in San Francisco del Mar, Oaxaca, the state’s prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

Treacherous boat rides up the coast of Mexico are often used by migrants hoping to cross into the US in an attempt to bypass checkpoints on closely monitored land routes.

The Oaxaca prosecutor’s office said the migrants had traveled on a boat operated by a Mexican man, which set off Thursday from Tapachula, Chiapas state, near the Guatemala border. One Chinese man survived the trip, the statement said. It did not explain what happened to the boat’s operator.

The prosecutor’s office said it was working with federal agencies to investigate the incident and the Chinese embassy in Mexico to identify the bodies.

The number of Chinese migrants illegally entering the US from Mexico has skyrocketed in recent years. In 2023, more than 37,000 Chinese citizens were picked up by law enforcement crossing illegally into the US from Mexico, US government data shows – compared with an average of roughly 1,500 per year over the preceding decade.

A dangerous but popular route

Iris Wang, 35, said she chose to take the boat to reach Oaxaca instead of the bus to avoid running into police on the road, without fully anticipating the danger.

“Those few hours were a nightmare that I’ll never forget for the rest of my life. It was too terrifying,” she said.

Wang said she and more than three dozen migrants were crammed into a boat roughly the size of two sedans. The vessel was so crowded that they had to sit with their legs crossed and couldn’t move at all.

The boat departed after midnight and immediately ran into a fierce storm in the pitch-black ocean.

“We were all shaken with fear. The waves were so high that we were repeatedly thrust into the air, all intertwined together, before falling to hit the bottom of the boat with a loud, painful bang. If it was a little higher, we would have been knocked out of the boat,” she said.

“I kept shaking and crying, and I silently chanted in my mind: I can’t die like this.”

Looking back at the journey, Wang said she felt incredibly lucky to have survived. “I never want to see the sea at night again,” she said.

The influx of Chinese migrants spotlights the urgency many now feel to leave their homeland, even amid what Chinese leader Xi Jinping has claimed is a “national rejuvenation.”

Many Chinese who left the country point to a struggle to survive.

Three years of Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions left people across China out of work – and disillusioned with the ruling Communist Party’s increasingly tight grip on all aspects of life under Xi.

And hope that business would fully rebound once restrictions ended a year ago has vanished, with China’s once envious economic growth stuttering.

Other migrants nod to restrictions on personal life in China, where Xi has overseen a sweeping crackdown on free speech, civil society and religion in the country of 1.4 billion.

Correction: An earlier version of this story included an image of a Japanese passport. It has been replaced.

A mayoral candidate has been assassinated and three others injured in a shooting in the Mexican city of Celaya, in the latest violence to mar the run-up to the country’s looming general election.

Bertha Gisela Gaytán, a mayoral candidate for Celaya, died on Monday after being shot while campaigning in the community of San Miguel Octopan, the Guanajuato state prosecutor’s office said, describing her death as an assassination.

Three other people were also injured in the attack, including a candidate for Celaya’s city council Adrián Guerrero.

Mexico’s Secretariat of Federal Public Security said Tuesday that Guerrero was currently considered missing, correcting its earlier declaration that he had died following injuries sustained in the same attack.

Authorities said investigators and forensic experts were at the scene collecting information to track the killers.

Gaytán’s death is the latest in a spate of killings that have taken place in the run-up to Mexico’s general election, which is expected to be held on June 2.

Gaytán had been campaigning for Morena, the party of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Lopez Obrador on Tuesday condemned the attack, saying, “These events are very regrettable because they are people who are fighting to assert democracy, who are in the streets, showing their faces, fighting for others and it hurts a lot that this happens in our country.”

Morena said it deeply regretted the “cowardly murder of our colleague.”

“We send our condolences and all solidarity to her family, friends and loved ones. We demand that the Guanajuato prosecutor’s office and the corresponding authorities investigate, arrest those responsible, and bring justice.”

According to the public affairs consultancy Integralia, from September to March, at least 12 candidates were killed and hundreds reported acts of violence against them.

Criminal gangs are known to finance campaigns during election season, intimidating candidates and violently intervening to compel politicians to cooperate with them, according to a report from Integralia Consultants. It added that criminal organizations center their attacks at the municipal level because mayors can offer them impunity in the territory due to their links with law enforcement and the local economy.

Guanajuato, a major manufacturing hub and production site for many of the world’s top carmakers, has been convulsed in recent years by brutal turf wars between rival drug gangs, who value it for the same reason as the carmakers: road and rail networks that lead straight to the US border.

Shortly before Monday’s attack, Gaytán had told a political rally that she had requested security. “Assistance has already been requested through the state legal system in the party. We are looking at this issue, to see how it is resolved. The citizens are with us, they take care of us, but of course we are going to have [security] protocols,” Gaytán said.

Guanajuato Governor Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo condemned the attack, saying it will not go unpunished.

He also said he would work with state officials to make sure those who participate in electoral processes have all the protection they need.

On June 2, more than 100 million Mexicans will be called to vote in a general election where 20,375 positions will be elected, of which 19,746 are local and 629 are federal, including the presidency.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to shut down news network Al Jazeera following the passage Monday of a sweeping law allowing the government to ban foreign networks perceived as posing a threat to national security.

Netanyahu said he intended “to act immediately in accordance with the new law” to stop the Qatari-based news outlet’s activity in the country, according to a post on social media platform X following the passage of the law.

Al Jazeera Media Network, which has produced dogged, on the ground reporting of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, slammed the decision in a statement, vowing it would not stop the network from continuing its “bold and professional coverage.”

The new law gives the prime minister and communications minister authority to order the temporary closure of foreign networks operating in Israel – powers that rights groups say could have far-reaching implications on international media coverage of the war in Gaza.

Its approval by Parliament Monday comes months into Israel’s war against Hamas and as Netanyahu faces mounting public pressure – and large public protests – over his handling of operations in Gaza.

Netanyahu’s government has also long complained about Al Jazeera’s operations, alleging anti-Israeli bias.

In his statement on X Monday, the prime minister accused the network of being a trumpet for Hamas and accused it of “actively participating in the October 7 massacre and inciting against IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) soldiers.”

Al Jazeera, which is funded in part by the Qatari government, said these were “slanderous accusations” that “jeopardize” not only the reputation of Al Jazeera but also the safety and rights of its employees worldwide.

Rights groups condemned the move to shutter Al Jazeera and the law’s potential implications.

In a statement the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it was “deeply concerned” by the new legislation.

“The law grants the government the power to close any foreign media outlets operating in Israel, posing a significant threat to international media within the country,” program director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said, adding it would “contribute to a climate of self-censorship and hostility toward the press.”

The White House also called reports of the move to shutter Al Jazeera “concerning.”

“The United States supports the critically important work journalists around the world do. And that includes those who are reporting in the conflict in Gaza,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday during a press briefing.

The move also comes during a critical period for relations between the Israeli and Qatari governments. The Gulf State has played a key role in ceasefire negotiations in the on-going war.

Fighting between Israel and Hamas began on October 7 when Hamas carried out a deadly attack on Israel, killing more than 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostages, according to Israel.

Israeli forces have since launched months of ongoing bombardment and ground operations in the Hamas-ruled enclave of Gaza, where the death toll stands higher than 32,000, according to the Ministry of Health in the strip.

Targeting Al Jazeera

The new law places a raft of restrictions on Al Jazeera in Israel, giving the government authority to take action against offices operated by the network and confiscate equipment and reporters’ press cards. It can also restrict its broadcasts and public access to its website.

Al Jazeera has an office in Jerusalem, as well as in the West Bank and Gaza.

Since the start of the war, it has produced critical, on-the-ground coverage of Israeli military operations and their humanitarian impact on the embattled enclave.

Last month, a United Nations spokesperson condemned the reported arrest and assault of Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Ismail Al-Ghoul while he was reporting from the Al Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City.

Several Al Jazeera reporters and their family members have also been killed in Israeli air strikes, according to the network.

On October 25, an air raid killed the family of Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, including his wife, son, daughter, grandson and at least eight other relatives, it said.

Al Jazeera broadcast Dahdouh as he walked into the morgue to view the bodies of his family in a heart-wrenching moment that provided a window for the world into the grief and loss experienced by many Gaza residents as Israeli’s military operations got underway.

Israeli’s passage of the law and move to ban the network comes amid mounting concerns from press freedom groups about causalities among journalists operating in war zones there and what they describe as obstruction of journalistic work by Israeli authorities.

As of April 1, 2024, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ preliminary investigations showed at least 95 journalists and media workers have been killed since the war began.

Palestinian journalists, including those working for a handful of international news agencies still operating inside Gaza, are vital witnesses to what is happening there. Israel’s military have taken some foreign reporters inside Gaza on a small number of escorted trips since October 7. But both Israel and Egypt, which control Gaza’s borders, have so far refused to let international journalists have unfettered access.