Ethiopia
Several previous newsletters have covered the fact that the United Nations and aid agencies have for months been pleading with the Ethiopian government to allow them full access to the conflict-ridden Tigray region, where they said hundreds of thousands of people were at risk of starvation. Now, the worst has happened. According to documents seen by the Reuters news agency, a UN assessment has found that 350,000 people are living in famine conditions. This is a man-made catastrophe that could have been prevented. The Ethiopian government has denied the report is accurate.
More from Reuters here. And Al Jazeera here.
Israel-Palestine
Israel-Palestine hasn’t been making international headlines since the end of Israel’s 11-day bombardment of the Gaza strip but the situation remains far from calm. At dawn on Thursday, Israeli operatives killed three Palestinian men in the West Bank in an apparent gun battle. Two of the men were intelligence officers for the Palestinian Authority, which administers much of the territory, according to local reports. Analysts say the killings will further inflame already sky-high tensions.
More from Middle East Eye here.
China
[Illustration by Molly Crabapple for Amnesty]
A horrific report from Amnesty International today on torture inside Chinese prison camps (the government calls them “vocational training camps”) in which Uighur Muslims have been interned in huge numbers, according to the UN, rights groups and Western governments. Amnesty’s report calls the camps “a dystopian hellscape”.
More from the Guardian here. And the full Amnesty report is here.