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🌎  7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW

• Israel bombs Gaza after deadly Nablus raid: Israel has launched airstrikes north of Gaza City after rockets were fired — and intercepted — from the besieged Palestinian enclave a day after 11 Palestinians were killed during an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank. Amid renewed concerns of a broader escalation, mediation efforts were underway by Egypt and the United Nations to calm the situation as U.N. Middle East envoy Tor Wennesland arrived in Gaza to meet Hamas leaders.

• Ukraine bracing for attacks on eve of 1-year anniversary: Ukraine military authorities have issued warnings to expect Russian-led attacks today, to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the invasion that will be marked Friday. Meanwhile, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has arrived in Kyiv to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky. His trip comes just days after the respective visits by U.S. President Joe Biden and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

• U.S. TV journalist and child killed at murder scene: A TV journalist and a nine-year-old girl were shot dead in Florida, allegedly by the same gunman who killed a woman earlier in the day in the area. An investigation is ongoing and an 19-year-old suspect was apprehended.

• EU bans TikTok from corporate devices: The Europe Union’s executive IT service has asked all EU Commission employees to uninstall TikTok from their corporate devices, as well as the personal devices using corporate apps, citing data protection concerns.

• Toyota and Honda big pay raise: Toyota Motor, the world’s biggest automaker, said it would accept a union demand for the biggest base salary increase in 20 years and a rise in bonus payments, as Japan steps up calls for businesses to hike pay. Rival Honda Motor followed suit within hours, agreeing to union demands for a 5% pay increase — the biggest jump since at least 1990.

• Qantas profits: Australian flagship airline Qantas Airways Ltd swung to a record first-half profit as appetite for travel grew faster than it could sell seats, but its shares went down 6% as it and competitors added more flights.

• Britain's vegetable crisis blamed on Brexit: Britain's biggest supermarket group Tesco followed rivals Asda, Morrisons and Aldi in imposing customer purchase limits on tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers after supplies were hit by disrupted harvests in southern Europe and northern Africa. Former Sainsbury's CEO Justin King said the sector had been “hurt horribly by Brexit,” as a lack of government support has meant home growers have been unable to make up for supplies hit by poor harvests overseas.

🗞️  FRONT PAGE

At least 11 Palestinians were killed and 100 others were wounded, during an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli military said that Wednesday’s operation targeted the Palestinian military group called the Lion’s Den, which it says recently carried out shooting attacks against Israelis in the West Bank. The raid is shown on the cover of Israeli national newspaper, Hayom.

#️⃣  BY THE NUMBERS

0.78

South Korea has broken its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate, down to 0.78 in 2022 from 0.81 the previous year. The country is struggling to find ways to get young couples to marry and have more children, in a context marked by a lack of quality jobs and rising housing costs.

📰  STORY OF THE DAY

First signs the China-Africa love affair is growing cold

China has invested billions in multiple African countries in order to expand its influence. But both sides have been quietly scaling back the relationship, as Africans resent one-sided deals and China fears defaults on debt, write Christian Putsch and Christina zur Nedden in German daily Die Welt.

🤐 In December, Kenya's new president, William Ruto, broke a taboo that pertains to pretty much every Chinese loan agreement with African governments: the secrecy clause. The ominous details relate to the construction of an entirely overpriced rail line from Nairobi to the coastal city of Mombasa worth $3.6 billion. The case explains why Beijing is so keen to keep such contracts confidential.

📉 But it is not only in Kenya that resentment against the rotten deals has been growing for some time. As recently as 2016, Chinese loan commitments had peaked at nearly $30 billion. In 2019, however, according to the China Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, they had fallen to less than $10 billion, and in the first pandemic year, the value even collapsed to $2 billion.

💸 What lies behind this withdrawal? Some are problems in China that were exacerbated even further by Beijing's zero-COVID policy: slow-down in economic growth, a real estate bubble and a demographic crisis due to the birth rate declining for the first time in decades.

➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com

📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO

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📣 VERBATIM

“This is the only country we have and we must do everything to keep it safe, united and peaceful.”

— Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari comments after the signing of a “peace pact” days before national elections aimed at avoiding unrest from supporters of losing candidates. The pact is meant to ensure “the conduct of free, fair, credible, transparent and verifiable elections…(and) to place national interest above personal and partisan concerns.” Pollsters say Saturday’s vote in the African nation of 213 million is too close to call.

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