A ship carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza has departed the port city of Larnaca in Cyprus, according to World Central Kitchen, a non-profit which said it is the first maritime shipment of aid to the war-torn strip.

“After weeks of preparation, our team in Cyprus loaded almost 200 tons of food onto the Open Arms boat that will deliver the desperately-needed aid,” WCK said in a statement on Tuesday.

WCK is working with thousands of contractors and volunteers locally to organize and distribute the aid, the spokesperson added. It has partnered with the United Arab Emirates, Cyprus and the Spanish charity Open Arms to coordinate the dispatch.

The aid dispatch comes as Cyprus, the European Commission, the United States, the UAE and the United Kingdom are working to establish a maritime corridor to deliver aid assistance directly to Gaza.

The ship was originally expected to depart Sunday from Larnaca, Cyprus, but had been delayed due to “practical issues,” the Cypriot government spokesperson Konstantinos Letymbiotis said in a briefing Monday.

The ship is normally a search and rescue vessel used by the NGO Open Arms. To transport the pallets from the barge and the ship to land, a temporary jetty will be built in an undisclosed location in Gaza, though the precise details of the effort are unclear.

On Sunday, WCK Founder Jose Andres said the jetty would be built with material and infrastructure in Gaza with help from barges and amphibious vehicles. He said on X that the pier would be built “With @openarms_fund serving as our logistics and command in the water…carrying the initial barge near the beach….plus a big cargo boat for reloading.”

The ship will be towing a large barge packed with pallets of food aid, including rice, flour, beans, lentils, and canned meats.

WCK says it has served more than 35 million meals in Gaza since October, and is working with almost 400 locally-hired staff.

‘Not enough’

“Roads have been the traditional method we have used in the past, and we have three roads that enter Gaza, north to south,” he said, adding that with only one road currently operational, relief is slowed.

Delivering aid by ship also comes with its own complications.

“One of the problems and complications, I think, will be the logistics of offloading boats onto a beach, and then onloading onto trucks,” McGoldrick said, adding that this will have to be done in an area which is “prone to insecurity.”

WCK said it is working with partners in Gaza to construct a jetty, that will then be used to offload aid before loading it onto trucks.

“The ground aid arriving in the northern Gaza Strip is very, very small…not enough for anyone,” Gaza Ministry of Health spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qidra said Tuesday.

As Israel continues to restrict the entry of aid via land crossings, countries are now trying to get aid into the besieged enclave via air and sea routes. The US, Jordan and the UAE and several others have carried out airdrops into Gaza in recent days despite warnings from aid organizations that they are a dangerous and inefficient way of transporting aid.

Once aid arrives in Gaza, it is transported via two routes: Salah Eddine street and Al-Bahr street, Al-Qidra said. Hungry civilians then “crowd” along two roundabouts along the routes, hoping to get a morsel of food, Al-Qidra said in a statement.

Brink of famine

The ongoing delivery comes as northern Gaza is on the brink of famine as aid deliveries fall short, according to the head of the UN World Food Programme. The number of children dying of malnutrition and dehydration in the area is rising, including two newborn girls on Monday, a pediatrician at the Kamal Adwan Hospital said.

Israel’s siege on Gaza has drastically diminished essential supplies entering the strip, where Palestinians are facing starvation, dehydration and hunger.

Israeli authorities insist there is “no limit” on the amount of relief that can enter Gaza, but humanitarian groups have repeatedly warned Israel’s restrictions on land crossings into the strip has throttled aid distribution efforts.

Humanitarian workers and government officials working to deliver urgently needed aid for Gaza say a clear pattern has emerged of Israeli obstruction.

At the port of Igarapé da Fortaleza, in the far north of Brazil, dock workers unload large orange-red sacks from small wooden boats. Small dark berries scatter around the dock, staining everything purple and making the pavement slippery. After being washed, processed, and blended, each sack will make about five gallons of açaí pulp that will go into bowls, smoothies, and freeze-dried supplements.

In Spring, when most fruit is not yet ripe, each 130-pound sack is being sold to wholesalers for about $80, more than double the price it sells for when it is in season. Buyers may or may not know that the superfood they are purchasing to sell to multinationals may have been picked by children — no one is checking.

Eighty dollars would be a fortune for harvesters to take home, but they still need to pay the “crossers,” who provide boat transportation from nearby villages to the jungle and back, and the landowners whose trees they harvested. It has not always been this way. Growing demand has transformed what was once a mostly local industry into an international operation that puts pressure on communities that have, for decades, depended on the fruit for economic survival and their own subsistence.

In 2012, the state of Pará, which produces more than 90% of Brazil’s açaí, exported 39 tons of the fruit; in 2022, 8,158 tons were exported generating over $26 million in revenue, according to industry data. As a result, children are being sent on dangerous journeys to harvest the fruit, climbing trees as tall as 70 feet without harnesses, and exposing themselves to the perils of the swamps of the rainforest, including venomous snakes, scorpions, and jaguars.

Picking berries to help feed his family

Lucas walked through the jungle using a machete as big as his arm to slice large leaves and branches. As he cleared the path, he looked up as much as he looked ahead, scanning each palm tree in the canopy. “Here, this one’s got some,” Lucas said, dropping his tarp bag.

He tucked his machete into the waist of his shorts, and with a single jump wrapped his skinny legs around the trunk of a palm tree. He pulled himself up, scaling 20 feet up the palm before disappearing into the canopy. After some rustling, Lucas yelled, “It’s ripe!” The rustling increased, and leaves, sticks and tiny, rock-hard purple-black berries began to fall. Wengleston was pleased. “You got two!” Lucas slid down with two bunches of açaí, weighing about 10 pounds each. Lucas will do this dozens of times on a single day.

Wengleston, now 20 years old, dropped out of school when he was Lucas’ age to work full time. In these seven years, he’s developed serious back pain from carrying up to 200 pounds of açaí on his back daily. “One day I was lifting a sack and I felt that my back just ripped open,” Wengleston said. “Some days I can’t work because of all the pain, so I have to stay home.” He said he is afraid of losing more mobility soon, or ending up like other açaí harvesters who have developed back issues so severe they can no longer walk.

Policing hard-to-reach locations

Across the country, 1.9 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 were engaged in child labor in 2022, according to a December report from Brazil’s statistics bureau. Of those, at least 756,000 worked in what the International Labor Organization calls the worst forms of child labor, which includes “dangerous” conditions.

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to tackling this problem is that regions where child labor is most pervasive are the hardest ones to police, authorities say. “That’s why they’re called hard-to-reach locations, where you can only reach and get there with a lot of effort and overcoming all these obstacles,” said Allan Bruno, a prosecutor with Brazil’s Public Ministry of Labor.

Bruno said they have a special focus on the Marajó archipelago and the coastline of Amapá, where rural work is characterized mostly by buffalo breeding and açaí harvesting, and they investigate the use and recruitment of children for this type of work.

Bruno is part of a special joint task force of prosecutors, investigators, and federal police that investigates situations akin to slavery and raids properties to rescue workers and children.

Usually, Bruno said, the people being rescued are not aware that their rights are being infringed upon. “These are people who are inserted at the bottom of society, who did not have the right to education, did not have the right to health, and did not have the right to basic rights that could enable them to develop minimum employability. So, these are pockets of poverty that are the focus of recruitment by recruiters who seek cheap labor to exploit,” Bruno said.

He adds that the system is too slow, understaffed, and lacking the resources to inspect such a big swath of the country — and one that only now is starting to fix itself after years of not being a priority for the federal government: There are currently 900 openings waiting to be filled for labor inspectors.

For now, Lucas will continue to scale these towering trees, but authorities’ focus on his region offers hope for a future where children aren’t forced to risk their lives in dangerous labor to feed themselves and their families

Moscow is ready to use nuclear weapons if there is a threat to the existence of the Russian state but “there has never been such a need,” President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with state media published Wednesday.

The Russian leader made the comments to Rossiya 1 and RIA Novosti ahead of presidential elections on March 15, in which he is widely expected to sail through to a fifth term in office, and as his full-scale war in Ukraine grinds into a third year.

Putin said that from a military and technical standpoint, Russia is ready for a nuclear war, though he didn’t say one was imminent.

He warned that if US troops were deployed to Ukraine, Russia would treat them as interventionists.

“Apart from (US President Joe) Biden, there are enough other experts in the sphere of Russian-American relations and strategic restraint. So I don’t think that everything is going to go head-on here, but we are ready for it,” Putin said.

Putin said the United States is also developing nuclear forces but that doesn’t mean they are ready to “launch a nuclear war tomorrow.”

“They are now setting tasks to increase this modernity, innovation, they have a corresponding plan. We know about it too. They are developing all their components. So are we,” Putin said.

“Weapons exist in order to use them. We have our own principles.”

The Biden administration was specifically concerned Russia might use a tactical or battlefield nuclear weapon, the officials said.

Last year, Putin deployed tactical nuclear weapons to neighboring ally Belarus, and former Russian President and deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said strategic nuclear weapons could be used to defend territories incorporated into Russia from Ukraine.

Speaking to Russian state media, Putin said Western countries thought they could “do away” with Russia at the start of the Ukraine invasion, but instead, he claimed Moscow’s financial and economic systems are stable, and the capabilities of its armed forces are only growing.

NATO intelligence estimates of Russian defense production suggest that Russia appears on track to produce nearly three times more artillery munitions than the US and Europe, a key advantage ahead of what is expected to be another Russian offensive in Ukraine later this year. It’s also running artillery factories “24/7” on rotating 12-hour shifts, a NATO official said.

However, Russia’s ramp-up is still not enough to meet its needs, US and Western officials say, and Western intelligence officials do not expect Russia to make major gains on the battlefield in the short term.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is in desperate need of US aid for arms and armaments, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky saying “millions” could die without it.

The Biden administration announced another package of military aid to Ukraine worth up to $300 million on Tuesday but Biden said it was “not nearly enough,” and Congress needs to pass additional funding.

In his interview with state media, Putin said Russia would be willing to negotiate on Ukraine, but only if based on reality.

“Are we ready for negotiations? Yes, we are ready, but only ready for negotiations, not based on some desires after the use of psychotropic drugs, but based on the realities that have developed, as they say in such cases, on the ground,” Putin said.

Asked if there could be a “fair agreement” with the West, he said, “I don’t believe anyone, but we need guarantees.”

Zelensky has previously rejected suggestions it was time to negotiate peace with the Kremlin and has repeatedly said he would not give up Ukrainian territory.

Also during the interview with Rossiya 1 aired Wednesday, Putin said Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod and Kursk are happening amid Kyiv’s “failures” on the battlefield. The goal of Ukraine’s attacks, he added, is to interfere with Russia’s upcoming election.

The three Russian oil refineries targeted are in the cities of Ryazan, about 130 miles southeast of Moscow; Kstovo, in the Nizhny Novgorod region, nearly 300 miles east of the capital; and Kirishi in Russia’s northwest. The trio of facilities are among Russia’s largest refineries, the source said.

It marked the second consecutive day of Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy sites, and the locations targeted represent a spate of attacks well within Russia’s territory.

They came after a chaotic day on the Russian side of the Ukrainian border, during which pro-Ukrainian groups of Russian fighters said they launched cross-border attacks and claimed to have gained control of the village of Tyotkino in Russia’s Kursk region.

Russia’s defense ministry said Wednesday its air defenses destroyed 58 Ukrainian drones overnight, including some that traveled as far as the Leningrad region, which borders Finland, supporting Kyiv’s claims.

The regional governor in Ryazan, Pavel Malkov, said a fire broke out at the facility there but has since been extinguished. He said two people were injured.

Social media video from the refinery complex, one of Russia’s largest, showed a large plume of smoke billowing from a building in the distance.

A day earlier, Russian authorities reported at least 25 drone attacks, with local officials in the Oryol and Nizhny Novgorod regions reporting hits to fuel and energy facilities.

No casualties have been reported from either Tuesday or Wednesday’s attacks.

But an apparent cross-border incursion on Tuesday saw attacks launched in the village of Odnorobovka in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, and in the nearby Russian villages of Nekhoteevka and Spodariushino in Belgorod, according to Russian authorities.

Russia’s Belgorod Region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said 10 civilians were injured and six were hospitalized in the region on Tuesday.

As well as targeting Russia’s deep oil reserves, Kyiv’s latest strikes may be partially intended to bring home to Russians the impact of the war just as the country prepares for a presidential election.

The vote is essentially certain to hand Putin a fifth term, extending his rule into the 2030s. Voting will take place over three days from Friday, with the president sailing towards another spell in power in a ballot that is not considered free or fair and in which he faces no genuine competition.

During a lengthy interview on state television channel Rossiya 1 on Wednesday, Putin said Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod and Kursk are happening amid Kyiv’s “failures” on the battlefield.

“All this is happening against the backdrop of failures on the line of contact, on the front line. They did not achieve any of the goals they set for themselves last year,” Putin said. “Against the backdrop of those failures, they need to show at least something, and, mainly, attention should be focused on the information side of the matter.”

Pro-Ukrainian groups of Russian fighters claimed to have launched cross-border attacks in two regions of Russia on Tuesday, hours after Kyiv fired a wave of drones at targets across the country.

The group, comprising a few hundred battle-hardened, anti-Kremlin Russian volunteers fighting as part of Ukraine’s armed forces, also said it had destroyed an armored personnel carrier inside Russia.

A separate pro-Ukrainian group of Russian fighters, the Siberian Battalion, wrote Tuesday on Telegram: “Well, we’re home at last. As promised, we are bringing freedom and justice to our Russian land.”

A third group, the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), also claimed to be involved in the fight.

The Russian defense ministry said “Ukrainian terrorist formations” with tanks and armored vehicles tried to cross the border from three directions early Tuesday, but claimed the attacks had been “thwarted.”

The ministry said the attacks were launched in the village of Odnorobovka in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, and in the nearby Russian villages of Nekhoteevka and Spodariushino in Belgorod.

“The enemy was struck by aviation, missile forces and artillery,” the ministry said. It claimed to have “eliminated” five tanks an armored personnel carrier in Nekhoteevka and Spodariushino.

The ministry also said its forces had killed 60 Ukrainian soldiers near Odnorobovka as they attempted to cross into Russia.

The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said 10 civilians had been injured and six were hospitalized after Ukraine attempted to break through Russian territory Tuesday. He added that Ukrainian fighters were not presently in the Belgorod settlements.

Russia’s Belgorod region has suffered several cross-border attacks since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago, as Kyiv has sought to bring the effects of war home to Russia.

In May 2023, the Freedom for Russia Legion claimed responsibility for an incursion into Belgorod. In the following months, Ukraine began to target the region with shelling and drone strikes, prompting the Kremlin to pledge to improve Belgorod’s air defenses.

Drone strikes

Earlier, Russia’s defense ministry said its air defenses had intercepted and destroyed two drones over Moscow, seven over Belgorod, 11 over Kursk, two over Oryol and one each over Leningrad, Bryansk and Tula regions.

One of the drones struck an oil depot in Oryol region, causing a fire that the governor there said had been extinguished. No casualties were reported.

Belgorod’s governor accused Ukraine of using a drone to drop four explosives over the region. He said there were no casualties but there was damage to the power line, leaving seven settlements without electricity.

School children in Kursk will also move to online learning due to “safety concerns,” the governor of that region announced Tuesday. The decision will affect more than 4,500 students across 34 schools in the Sudzhansky and Glushkovsky districts. Similar measures will be in place in various districts of Belgorod.

Later Tuesday, Russia reportedly fired back at the southern Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, President Volodmyr Zelensky’s hometown. At least three people, two women and one man, were killed and 40 injured – including 10 children – by missile strikes that left several multi-story buildings ablaze.

The head of the Defense Council of Kryvyi Rih Oleksandr Vilkul said nine people had been rescued from the rubble so far.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed his condolences to the families and friends of the victims in a Telegram post on Tuesday, saying the rescue operation would continue “as long as needed.”

Russian military plane crashes

In what appeared to be a separate incident on Tuesday, a Russian military plane crashed hundreds of kilometers northeast of Moscow after its engine caught fire, Russian state media RIA Novosti reported, citing the defense ministry.

Eight crew members and seven passers were on board the Ilyushin IL-76 when it crashed in the Ivanovo region while taking off, according to RIA.

Tuesday’s incident was the second IL-76 crash inside Russia this year. Russia blamed Ukraine for the January downing of an IL-76 over Belgorod, saying all 74 people on board were killed, including dozens of Ukrainian servicemen being transported for a prisoner swap.

A 12-year-old Palestinian boy was shot and killed by a border police officer in Shuafat refugee camp in occupied east Jerusalem, according to hospital officials and an Israeli police spokesperson.

The Israeli police spokesperson said police forces responded to a “violent disturbance” at the refugee camp and a border police officer fired “towards a suspect who endangered the forces while firing aerial fireworks in their direction.”

The shooting came on the third night of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, which has been a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in previous years.

The police spokesperson said individuals on Tuesday night also threw Molotov cocktails and fired fireworks directly at security forces.

No security forces are visible in the video of Al Halhouli holding the firework, but the boy appears to be standing in front of the West Bank separation barrier.

In a second video filmed from above the scene after he is shot, the boy is lying on the ground as several people gather around him, while a woman screams and calls his name.

Israeli police said it was the second night in a row that Palestinians in Shuafat aimed Molotov cocktails and fireworks at police forces.

“Reinforced and undercover Border Guard forces were deployed to neutralize threats and prevent violent disturbances of order in the area,” the spokesperson said.

There were no casualties among the Israeli forces who dispersed the demonstrators at the Shuafat camp, the police spokesperson said.

In a Telegram post, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir applauded the soldier who shot and killed the boy.

“I support the Border Guard fighters who are operating at this time and are risking their lives now against dozens of Arab rioters in Shu’fat,” Ben-Gvir said.

“I salute the soldier who killed the terrorist who tried to shoot fireworks at him and the troops – this is exactly how you should act against terrorists – with determination and precision,” he said.

When NASA’s Europa Clipper aims to launch on its highly anticipated mission to an icy moon in October, the spacecraft will carry a unique design etched with names, poetry and artwork symbolizing humanity.

The US space agency has a long history of sending names and meaningful designs aloft aboard missions, including the Voyager probes, the Perseverance rover and Parker Solar Probe. Now, it’s Europa Clipper’s turn to carry on the tradition of ferrying a design that illustrates why humans are driven to explore the cosmos.

This latest mission is headed to Jupiter’s moon Europa, one of several lunar ocean worlds considered to be the best places to search for life beyond Earth. Scientists estimate that a global ocean with more than twice the amount of water in Earth’s oceans exists beneath Europa’s thick icy shell. Earth’s oceans contain about 321 million cubic miles (1.3 billion cubic kilometers) of water, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Decorated on both sides and made of the rare metal tantalum, the triangular plate will seal the spacecraft’s sensitive electronics inside a vault to protect them from Jupiter’s harsh radiation.

On the inside of the vault is a silicon microchip stenciled with more than 2.6 million names submitted by the public. The microchip is at the center of a design that shows a bottle floating within the orbit of Jupiter and its moons to symbolize that it serves as a cosmic message in a bottle.

Technicians at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, used electron beams to stencil the names at a size smaller than one-thousandth the width of a human hair.

Below the bottle, the design features the original poem “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa” by US Poet Laureate Ada Limón, etched in her handwriting, as well as a portrait of the late planetary sciences pioneer Ron Greeley, an Arizona State University professor who played a crucial role in laying the foundation for the development of a mission to Europa.

The side of the plate facing the inside of the vault also includes an etching of the Drake Equation, developed by the late astronomer Frank Drake of the University of California Santa Cruz in 1961 to estimate the possibility of finding advanced life beyond Earth. The equation remains an important part of astrobiological research as scientists search for evidence of life beyond our planet.

The external side of the plate carries waveforms, or visual representations of sound waves, that depict the word “water” in 103 languages from around the world. At the heart of the spiral is a symbol that means “water” in American Sign Language. The audio of the spoken languages collected by linguists for NASA is available on its website.

A planetary legacy

Early NASA probes such as Pioneer 10 and Voyager have continued to inspire the artwork that travels aboard other planetary science missions.

When NASA’s twin Voyager probes lifted off to explore the solar system just weeks apart in 1977, they carried identical golden records designed as the first recorded interstellar message from humankind to potential intelligent life in the cosmos. The records had both audio and visuals that aimed to capture Earth’s diversity of life and culture, including greetings in 59 human languages and 115 images of life.

Europa Clipper’s plate was designed with that spirit in mind to honor the potential connection between the moon’s ocean and Earth’s oceans, according to NASA.

“The content and design of Europa Clipper’s vault plate are swimming with meaning,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, in a statement. “The plate combines the best humanity has to offer across the universe — science, technology, education, art and math. The message of connection through water, essential for all forms of life as we know it, perfectly illustrates Earth’s tie to this mysterious ocean world we are setting out to explore.”

After a 1.6 billion-mile (2.6 billion-kilometer) journey to Europa, Europa Clipper will spend the next few years flying by the ice-covered moon to see whether the ocean beneath it could support life. Europa Clipper is set to make nearly 50 flybys of Europa, eventually coming within 16 miles (25.7 kilometers) above its thick ice crust to survey almost the entirety of that moon.

The spacecraft will use cameras, spectrometers, ice-penetrating radar and a thermal instrument to understand how the moon formed and whether it’s possible for life to exist on icy ocean worlds.

“We’ve packed a lot of thought and inspiration into this plate design, as we have into this mission itself,” said Robert Pappalardo, project scientist at JPL, in a statement. “It’s been a decades-long journey, and we can’t wait to see what Europa Clipper shows us at this water world.”

As China grapples with a struggling economy and an intensifying tech war with the United States, its leaders had one message for the thousands of political elites gathering in Beijing: the country will stay the course in becoming a high-tech powerhouse under the helm of one man – supreme leader Xi Jinping.

That note of confidence was echoed throughout a week of highly choreographed meetings of China’s rubber-stamp national legislature and top political advisory body, which concluded Monday with a ceremony in the cavernous Great Hall of the People.

The event, held largely without Covid restrictions for the first time in years, is a rare chance for the world to glimpse into an increasingly opaque political system under Xi.

Here are the major takeaways from the gathering:

Tightening control

The closing day of the National People’s Congress legislature on Monday was missing a key event – a press conference conducted by the Chinese premier. For decades, this curtain-closing “two sessions” tradition had offered foreign media and the Chinese public a rare opportunity to get first-hand insight into the thinking of the country’s nominal No. 2 official, who is charged with running its economy.

However, Beijing made the surprise announcement that it was scrapping the event last week, in a move that generated concern among observers about the ever-shrinking transparency of the Chinese government.

The more recent tradition of collective leadership, a model that came to the fore after the chaos of Mao Zedong’s strongman rule, has taken a backseat once again under Xi. The Premier and his State Council, which functions as China’s cabinet, have been increasingly sidelined in recent years as Xi ramped up the party’s role controlling the government and the messages it sends.

That was further underscored on Monday, when delegates rubber stamped an update to a law governing the organization of the State Council. Observers say the changes further formalized the body’s role as carrying out the directives of the Chinese Communist Party.

High-tech push

An overarching theme of the gathering was a push to focus China’s economic model on technology innovation and transform the country into a high-tech powerhouse.

In an address last week Premier Li called for boosting “self-reliance and strength in science and technology,” spelling out a push to upgrade industrial supply chains and enhance China’s position as a high-tech innovator. That included a boost to China’s annual budget for science and technology by 10% to an unprecedented 370.8 billion yuan ($51.6 billion).

Also highlighted was a new policy buzzword “new quality productive forces,” a term coined by Xi last year to refer to high tech sectors such as new energy vehicles, artificial intelligence, renewable energy and advanced manufacturing – signifying the leader’s desire to push the country ahead in the global race for critical technologies.

The emphasis on self-reliance in science and technology comes after the United States tightened control over the export of cutting-edge technologies to China, especially in the field of AI, which Washington said could be used to strengthen the Chinese military.

On the sidelines of the “two sessions,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi accused the US of “devising various tactics to suppress China” and slammed Washington’s trade and tech controls as reaching “bewildering levels of unfathomable absurdity.”

Restoring economic confidence

The economy was in the spotlight this year as China has been roiled by a property sector crisis, hefty local government debt, deflation, a stock market rout and tech friction with the US — all fueling public frustration and a loss of investor confidence.

Chinese leaders presiding over the event were keen to project confidence in the economy, rolling out an ambitious economic growth target of around 5% for 2024, but without announcing any major stimulus measures to increase flagging consumption.

That appeared to disappoint investors who’d been closely watching the gathering – with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index tumbling 2.6% on Tuesday after the targets were announced. The index has fallen by about 1% so far this week and has lost nearly 20% over the past 12 months.

Li conceded in his remarks that hitting that target “will not be easy,” given that a Covid-battered 2022 had provided a lower base of growth for last year, but he also vowed that China would make industrial upgrading a priority while leaning into tech innovation.

No new appointments

The annual meeting of the National People’s Congress disappointed some observers who were hoping to see certain key personnel appointments made at this year’s gathering – a move that would fill senior State Council roles left vacant for months after an abrupt shake-up in the ranks of Xi’s hand-picked ministers.

Foreign Minister Qin Gang was abruptly removed from his post without explanation in July followed by the removal of Defense Minister Li Shangfu months later, also without explanation. Both men had first vanished from public view and have been replaced.

Some observers expected that Beijing could appoint a new Foreign Minister at this year’s gathering. The role has been filled, in what many expected to be a temporary capacity, by senior diplomat and former Foreign Minister Wang Yi since Qin’s ouster.

Two high-ranking posts in China’s cabinet previously occupied by Li and Qin remain open. But Beijing declined to fill those posts at this year’s event.

India said Monday it had joined the world’s top nuclear powers by mastering the ability to put multiple warheads atop a single intercontinental ballistic missile.

The successful test of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) technology on the indigenously developed Agni-V ICBM puts India in a club that includes the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom.

Neighboring Pakistan has also claimed to have MIRV technology, but experts say the claim is unverified.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised the country’s scientists for the development, one of a series announced by his government months before a national election. The prime minister is seeking a rare third consecutive term in power.

“Proud of our DRDO [Defence Research and Development Organisation] scientists for Mission Divyastra, the first flight test of indigenously developed Agni-5 missile with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology,” Modi said X on Monday.

Indian scientists conducted the test at a facility on Abdul Kalam Island in the Bay of Bengal, off India’s northeast coast, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

“Various Telemetry and radar stations tracked and monitored multiple re-entry vehicles. The Mission accomplished the designed parameters,” the statement said.
India did not give an exact number of reentry vehicles released during the Agni-V test, but MIRVed missiles can carry a dozen or possibly more MIRV warheads.

Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh congratulated scientists and the team behind the test. “India is proud of them,” he wrote on X.

Home Minister Amit Shah called it a “a momentous day for our nation,” adding that the technology will “further accelerate” Modi’s vision of a “self-reliant Bharat (India).”

Each warhead, once released in space from the rocket that missile that carried it aloft, can be programmed to hit separate targets up to 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) apart, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-proliferation.

Overall, the Agni-V missile has a range of more than 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles), according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies Missile Defense Project. That puts India rivals like China and Pakistan well within range of the weapon.

A decades-old technology

MIRV technology is not new. The United States first deployed it in 1970 with the Minuteman III ICBM, according to the National Museum of the US Air Force.

The Minuteman III was designed to carry three warheads, but the US missiles now only carry one to comply with arms control treaties with Russia.

MIRVed missiles present a problem for ballistic missile defenses because interceptor missiles have to contend with a number of warheads traveling to targets hundreds of miles apart.

They are also considered “destabilizing” weapons, according to experts, as they present tempting first-strike targets.

“This creates a ‘use them or lose them’ scenario—an incentive to strike first in a time of crisis. Otherwise, a first strike attack that destroyed a country’s MIRVed missiles would disproportionately damage that country’s ability to retaliate,” according to a website posting from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

India’s announcement of MIRV capability comes as rival China has been expanding its nuclear forces in a similar fashion.

The US Defense Department’s 2023 report to Congress on China’s military said Beijing “is developing new ICBMs that will significantly improve its nuclear-capable missile forces and will require increased nuclear warhead production, partially due to the introduction of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) capabilities.”

China and India share a disputed border in the Himalayas, where deadly clashes have occurred as recently as 2020.

Controversial internet influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan have been detained in Romania on Monday over UK sex offense charges, Romanian police said on Tuesday.

Officers from the country’s Criminal Investigation Service and officers from the town of Voluntari “executed two European arrest warrants issued by the UK judicial authorities for the commission of sexual offences and exploitation of persons on the territory of Great Britain,” police said in a statement.

The two men were presented to the public prosecutor of the Bucharest Court of Appeal, who ordered their detention for 24 hours in the Bucharest Police Headquarters, the statement added.

Tate’s spokesperson Mateea Petrescu said in a statement Tuesday: “This bewildering revival of decade-old accusations has left the Tate brothers dismayed and deeply troubled.

“They categorically reject all charges and express profound disappointment that such serious allegations are being resurrected without substantial new evidence,” Petrescu said.

Tate and his brother spent three months in police custody in Bucharest last year and were then placed under house arrest pending a criminal investigation for alleged abuses committed against seven women, accusations they have denied.

They were released in August and put under judicial control, with a ban on leaving the Municipality of Bucharest and Ilfov county without prior approval from the court.

The two are awaiting trial in the country on separate charges of human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal group to sexually exploit women.