Sudan, Burkina Faso, India-China.
Today's three stories you should know.
Sudan
Civilians are desperately trying to escape Sudan’s capital Khartoum as fighting between government forces and a powerful militia continues. Thousands of families streamed out of the city, where bodies lay dead in the streets, as the death toll from five days of clashes neared 300. The conflict pits rival generals - army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy, Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces group - against each other in a battle for power. The roots of the bitter row between the two lie in a dispute over how to go about a promised transition to civilian rule following a military coup in 2019.
More from Al Jazeera here.
Burkina Faso
About 45,000 people living across West Africa’s Sahel region are on the brink of starvation with hunger reaching a 10-year high, the UN said today. The Sahel, an expansive area below the Sahara desert, has for years been the center of a conflict between the governments of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger and armed groups with links to al-Qaeda and ISIS. All of those countries are impacted, according to the UN, along with northern Nigeria and Mauritania. Burkina is worst hit with 42,000 of those facing catastrophic levels of hunger living there. While violence is the main driver of the crisis, things have been made worse by Covid and the global cost of living crisis.
More from AP here.
India-China
India will overtake China to become the world’s most populous country at some point in mid-2023, according to new UN projections. India will have an estimated 1.4286 billion people versus mainland China’s 1.4257 billion - a difference of about 2.9 million. The question being hotly debated in India now is whether that growth will bring an economic boom, transforming the country into a global powerhouse, or become a burden. China has had the world’s largest population since at least 1950.
More from the Hindu here.