JERUSALEM – Jerusalem – Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said “it may be just and moral to starve 2 million Gaza residents until Israeli hostages are returned, but no one in the world would let us. In a speech on Monday at the Katif Conference for National Responsibility in the town of Yad Binyamin, the far-right minister said Israel should take control of distributing aid inside Gaza and claimed that Hamas was in control of distribution channels within the strip.

It is impossible in today’s global reality to wage war  no one in the world would let us starve and thirst two million citizens, even though it may be just and moral until they return our hostages he said, adding that if Israel controlled aid distribution instead of Hamas, the war would have ended by now and the hostages would have returned. “You cannot fight Hamas with one hand and give them aid with the other. It’s his Hamas money, it’s his fuel, it’s his civilian control of the Gaza Strip. It just doesn’t work,” he said. Israel has control over aid that enters Gaza and aid groups are in charge of distributing it. While there have been some anecdotal reports from Gazans of Hamas stealing aid, it’s unclear how rampant it is. US Special Envoy David Satterfield said in February that no Israeli official had presented him or the Biden administration with “specific evidence of diversion or theft of assistance.”

Israel is facing mounting criticism from aid groups and international organizations for restricting food aid to the besieged Gaza Strip. A United Nations statement, citing independent experts, indicated last month that famine has spread across the entire enclave. The experts accused Israel of conducting an “intentional and targeted starvation campaign,” which they termed a “form of genocidal violence.

The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of “starvation as a weapon of war,” among other allegations. Netanyahu has strongly denied the allegations, saying they are based on a pack of lies.” He has said that if Palestinians in Gaza aren’t getting enough food, it’s not because Israel is blocking it, it’s because Hamas is stealing it. Israel has stated that it will not end the war until all hostages are freed and Hamas is eliminated. The conflict began after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli authorities. The war has resulted in the deaths of more than 39,000 people in Gaza, according to Palestinian authorities.  (CCN)…[+]

USA – Tropical Storm Debby is expected to bring downpours and flooding to historic southern US cities on Tuesday. At least five people were killed after it slammed into Florida as a category one hurricane before weakening to a tropical storm.

Early on Tuesday morning its centre was 50 miles southwest of Savannah, Georgia, and 130 miles southwest of Charleston, South Carolina. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned of a “life-threatening” flood threat as the slow-moving storm soaks part of the US southeast. Rainfall of 10 to 20 inches (25cm-50cm) could bring catastrophic flooding to parts of southeast Georgia, the eastern half of South Carolina, and southeast North Carolina, the NHC said.

Authorities said the dead included a 13-year-old boy who was killed when a tree fell on to a mobile home in the town of Levy County, located near Gainesville. In Hillsborough County – around Tampa – an 18-wheel lorry veered into a canal during the storm. The driver was found dead.

In Dixie County, just west of Gainesville, officials reported that a woman and a 12-year-old were killed when their car crashed on Sunday night. In southern Georgia, another death – a 19-year-old – was reported after a large tree fell on to a porch at a home in Moultrie, local media reported. The slow-moving pace of the storm could bring “catastrophic flooding”, Jamie Rhome, the deputy director of the hurricane centre, said.  Debby’s waves and strong winds helped blow 25 packages of cocaine, worth more than $1m, ashore in the Florida Keys, according to the US Border Patrol.

In Florida, some 150,000 homes and businesses were without power on Monday night, according to PowerOutage.com. Another 36,000 residents in Georgia and South Carolina were experiencing outages. The storm is forecast to skim the coast, drenching south-east Georgia and the Carolinas on Tuesday and Wednesday, before moving inland near the South Carolina coast on Thursday. (BBC) …[+]

KENYA – Young protesters in Kenya successfully demanded the withdrawal of a bill, that would have raised taxes on everything from bread to vegetable oil and sanitary towels. Inspired by their neighbours, Ugandans marched against corruption. Nigerians rallied against “bad governance” and the soaring cost of living.

Since the Covid pandemic, people have also taken to the streets in several other African countries including Ghana, Angola, Malawi and Senegal. While each protest has had unique drivers, they have some things in common – booming young populations struggling with high inflation, a lack of good jobs and a political class that they don’t trust. “Here in Kenya, if you look at these protests, actually, they were led by educated people. But most of them [were] jobless,” said Anthony Kamande, an inequality researcher at Oxfam, based in Nairobi. Africa is a young continent – 70% of the population is under the age of 30, according to the UN. Its population is expected to almost double in 30 years, to 2.2 billion.

Gen Z and millennial Africans are better educated than the generations before them. Of 22 countries that provided data to Unesco for 2011 to 2021, the proportion of students going on to higher education fell in only three. However, more than 10 million people are entering the workforce each year in sub-Saharan Africa, vying for just 3m jobs, according to the World Bank.

Many of those who don’t get formal work hustle in the badly paid, risky informal sector. Unemployment was ranked as the most important problem by 18- to 35-year-olds surveyed by the pan-African survey organisation Afrobarometer. On top of this, the economic shocks of the past few years – Covid, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sending food, fuel and fertiliser prices soaring, and the US central bank’s interest rate hikes pushing up borrowing costs globally – have triggered cost of living crises in many countries. (The Guardian) …[+]

BEIJING – China’s drive to advance modernization through comprehensively deepening reform has created a new engine for global economic growth, according to a think tank report released Tuesday in Beijing.

Titled “Deepening Reform Comprehensively to Advance Chinese Modernization: Major Achievements and Global Contributions,” the report was jointly released by the think tanks under the Institute of Party History and Literature of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and Xinhua News Agency. According to the report, China’s reform efforts have not only propelled the country’s own development but have also benefited the world. China’s steady economic and social progress, coupled with improvements in governance, has contributed its experience and strength to the global economy.

Against the backdrop of a sluggish global economy, China has continued to inject positive energy, with its share of the global economy increasing annually since 2012. From 2013 to 2021, China’s average contribution to global economic growth ranked first consistently, surpassing the combined contributions of the Group of Seven (G7) countries, the report said. Noting that a more efficient and vigorous Chinese economy will become a locomotive of global economic growth, the report stated that China’s economic momentum brought by the comprehensive deepening of reform has greatly propelled global economic development.

Using China’s tech-intensive and green products  the “new three,” namely electric vehicles (EVs), solar batteries, and lithium-ion batteries  as an example, the report stated that the booming export of such products has not only enriched the global supply and eased the global inflation pressure but also promoted the global green transition. China has seized the historic opportunity of the new round of industrial revolution to foster new quality productive forces. By unleashing market vitality and ensuring the flow of various production resources into related areas, China has forged an innovation engine for the global economy, according to the report.

As the highest-ranking middle-income economy on the Global Innovation Index, China is playing an increasingly significant role in the global innovation landscape, the report noted. It added that the widespread application of China’s technological innovations has brought more convenience to people’s lives in other countries, contributing technological strength to global economic growth and human development. In the process of comprehensively deepening reform, China is committed to promoting inclusive and balanced economic globalization and providing a better platform for international cooperation, the report noted. From the Belt and Road Initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to major international expos like the China International Import Expo and the Canton Fair, China’s active efforts have amplified the voices of emerging markets and developing countries, helping them garner greater attention and consideration, the report said.   (Xinhua) …[+]