Islamabad, Pakistan
CNN
–

The relentless flood claims the lives of more than 170 people in eastern Pakistan, with about half of its children in the latest catastrophe underscoring the country’s vulnerability to the escalating climate crisis.

At least 54 people have come in the past 24 hours, according to the National Disaster Management Agency. This is after heavy rains swept through Punjab’s most populous state, knocking down homes and destroying roads.

The NDMA said at least 85 children have been killed since the flood began on June 26th.

Aid agencies warn that fears are rising in children, particularly vulnerable to the risk of catching drowsing and life-threatening illnesses from waterborne diseases.

Authorities say the military is being deployed to Rawalpindi city to deal with rising flood levels, and the military is being deployed, with the state of emergency declared.

Videos shared by the Punjab Disaster Management Bureau show dramatic rescue as floods submerge the fields and the entire road. For one, it can be seen by first responders who safely carry the child with an inflatable raft.

Heavy rain continues to hit Rawalpindi and the nearby capital, Islamabad, recording more than 100 millimeters on Thursday, according to Pakistan’s Weather Service. He added that more heavy rain is expected on Friday.

Mahal Hamad, a resident of Punjab’s Salgoda district, told CNN that he was “severely affected” by the flood.

Hamad, a daily wage worker who sells vegetables, said the flood had put him financially backwards. The roof of his house was broken and the rain started to seep in, he said.

“I had a huge loss. I was selling vegetables, but everything is submerged in the water. I’m just a person. I work all day, just to win 1,000 rupees (4 dollars).

Seven flood relief camps are set up nationwide to provide food, water, medicine and shelter to those affected by the flood.

Pakistan is at the forefront of a human-induced climate crisis. More than 230 million countries are being hit by two powerful weather systems. One runs through heat and drought, the other unleashes the relentless monsoon rain.

“This is more than just ‘bad weather’. It’s a symptom of the accelerated climate crisis,” Pakistan senator and former minister Shelley Lehman said in X.

This year’s permanent heat wave accelerated glacial melts in the northern part of the country, causing flash floods earlier this year.

Fatal floods from heavy rains in months of monsoons often bring headlines in South Asian countries. This year’s downpour has revived memories of the record-breaking flood three years ago.

Pakistan experienced the worst flood in history in 2022, of which a third of the country has sunk from heavy rain, killing more than 1,000 people.

The power of the flood washed away the house, leaving tens of thousands on the road without eating food or drink to drink.

As floods began to recede, a large number of water-related diseases began to infect thousands of people. Most of them are children. Parents desperately tried to seek help as their child contracted dysentery, dengue and malaria.

According to UNICEF, about 4 million children were still there a year after without using safe water.

Hong Kong
CNN
–

A few weeks after his country was hit by a wave of Israeli strikes and the US bombed three valuable nuclear facilities, Iran’s foreign minister met with a brief question this week at a gathering of Chinese regional diplomats.

Their group, Beijing and Moscow-backed Shanghai cooperative organizations, should have a way to coordinate responses to military attacks and play a “central role” in dealing with such threats, Abbas Aragci said, according to Iran’s national media.

Along with Iran, SCO members China and Russia are important members of what Washington lawmakers called the “axis” of dictatorships or anti-American integrity of Iran, North Korea, China and Russia.

However, the Iranian proposal does not seem to have direct support from the group, which has 10 members, a regional security group that includes close partners from China and Russia, but also includes rivals from India and Pakistan.

And what was included in Araguchi’s message was a public hint of Iran’s disappointment. Last month, when Israel and the US military hit freely with top military and technical targets, powerful friends from Beijing and Moscow appeared to be sitting on the sidelines.

Still, according to Chinese readouts, Araguchi met at a meeting in China’s Tianjin with Chinese Foreign Minister in Tianjin on Wednesday, saying that he “thanks for his valuable support to Iran.”

Earlier this month, at a summit between another China-Russia-supported group in a massive emerging economy, Iran, member states, were merely a statement of “serious concern over deliberate attacks on private infrastructure and peaceful nuclear facilities.”

The declaration “denounced” the strike but did not name it Israel or the United States.

However, China’s public response – explicitly condemning the attack but not playing a clear direct role in peacebuilding – has been widely seen as a sign of the limitations of power in the Middle East despite bids to strengthen the regional economic and diplomat influence.

Instead, Beijing has focused on using conflicts to play another message. That means China doesn’t want to be a global leader using power like the United States.

The propaganda machinery of the Chinese ruling Communist Party has long denounced America’s “hegemony” and its “forced use.”

Trade and technology friction with Washington has required more friends than ever before, so they sell that message more important to Beijing. And it sees President Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy as creating an opening there.

Over the past decade, Chinese attacks, which have expanded the scope of contested claims in the South China Sea, Taiwan’s military intimidation, and expanded naval expansion, have recently trained more from the home coast, drilling with more strength than ever before.

Beijing is crying out “hypocrisy,” and in 2022 Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced his own vision for global security architecture.

That vision united Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who share a distrust of NATO and consider it a provocative actor. That’s a key position and a subtext of why Beijing never condemned Russia’s infringement of Ukraine.

Experts say that China’s apparent lack of role in mediating conflict between Israel and Iran, where Beijing has deep historical and economic ties, indicates the limits of its impact in the region.

However, they also say that Beijing has little interest in walking into regional security as a power player.

“In terms of providing mediation, (China) is happy to provide it, but there is little capacity to project military force in the Middle East and even less political will to be openly and directly involved,” said William Figueroa, an expert on Chinese-Iran relations and an assistant professor at Groningen University in the Netherlands.

Unlike the United States, which maintains substantial military assets to support the region’s allies and interests, China’s ground forces are limited to naval bases in the horns of Djibouti, Africa. Certainly, Beijing’s only military alliance is historic with fellow communist North Korea in its neighbourhood.

Beijing also took part in international efforts last winter to avoid protecting major maritime lanes that are under attack by Yemen’s Hooti rebels following the war between Israel and Gaza.

The attacks put China’s commercial interests at stake, despite Houthis saying it would not target Chinese or Russian ships. And when it comes to efforts to seek a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, China is once again on the sidelines despite its position as an international voice calling for a ceasefire and criticizing Israeli war.

Some experts argue that if China has more global military capabilities, it may throw more of its weight outside its own region.

However, in the Israeli-Iran conflict, Beijing’s focus was on “presenting support for international law as a great alternative to what to portray as a militaristic and illegal intervention in the West,” according to Ton Zhao, a senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“The story has limited traction among the Middle Eastern states, but it works well in the global South, where it helps to hone China’s image and strengthen strategic competition with Washington at a global level,” added Zhao.

Even if Beijing’s response wasn’t surprising to Tehran, going to China and “behave like everything is great” could have been a “bitter pill to swallow” for Araguchi and Iranian defense minister Aziz Nasirzadeh in recent weeks, according to Jonathan Fulton, senior fellow at the Middle East Program at the Atlantic Council.

Beijing and Tehran had no mutual defense treaties, and their relationship was primarily economic treaties. According to Muyu Xu, a senior oil analyst at trade intelligence company Kpler, China took over 90% of Iran’s oil trade imported through intermediaries, bringing Iran’s profits to about $40 billion last year.

Even when it comes to Russia, China’s closest international partner, Beijing is taking a careful step. It will stop the massive supply of military goods due to the Moscow war in Ukraine, instead buying Russian fuel and supply double goods that can strengthen the industrial bases of national defense.

Its support, and more direct military support from Iran and North Korea for the Russian war, has sparked vigilance in the West about new coordination among members to the so-called anti-American “axis.”

However, the latest stress tests for “Axis” appeared to show its weakness. With Israeli and US bombs raining in Iran, Russia and China appeared to be focusing on their own interests and rhetoric. However, Xi and Putin used conflict to emphasize their united front.

However, when it comes to connections with Iran, the actual tests are likely to be:

“This has limitations on what China is trying to do with regard to direct intervention in military conflicts,” said Brian Hart, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank. However, “It is too early to count China’s support for Iran.”

The Russian Chinese model of “walking to the line that it doesn’t provide overt military support” could be a dynamic that develops here, Hart said, as Beijing appears to help the Tehran regime take power. The double-use Chinese-made chemicals needed to produce missile fuel were delivered to Iran earlier this year, CNN reports show.

Still, according to Atlantic Council Fulton, Beijing may be more skeptical of Iran as a strong partner in the region, in that it “cannot project forces to defend airspace” against Israel last month.

And the basics remain the same as how the latest events affect coordination with so-called “axis” countries.

Far from being an alliance or bloc of the West, China, Iran, Russia and North Korea, it has “dissatisfaction alignment” with the West, but there are “very different ideas” of how to restructure global rules to address it, Fulton said.

And for Beijing, “What we need in the Middle East is economically motivated. We need a stable region, and Iran really doesn’t support it. Iran creates as many problems as it solves for Beijing.”

Tokyo
CNN
–

Japan has worked hard to attract foreigners and boost the economy, but now too much awareness is spurring the creation of a new task force as voting competition heats up ahead of Sunday’s national elections.

This issue lies on the political agenda ahead of the Senate election. This is part of the Fringe Party, nodding to the rhetoric of US President Donald Trump’s nativeist rhetoric and promoting “Japan’s first” policy.

Isba Prime Minister on Tuesday launched a task force officially ordered to promote the association of harmonious coexistence with foreigners, citing “nuisance or nuisance behavior with foreigners” and “various abnormal use” government systems “crime or nuisance behavior”;

The world’s fourth largest economy has a long history of strict immigration policies and a strong cultural tension of isolationism.

However, as the population ages rapidly and the birth rates are rising rapidly, Japan is gradually opening up to foreign workers, looking for more international tourists.

Pulling up a drawbridge could exacerbate the demographic crisis and put the tourism industry at risk, experts warn.

Here are what we know about the task force and why foreigners have become election issues.

Isba described the new office as a “command center” coordination policy for both Japanese and foreigners. Among the areas it covers are immigrants, land acquisition by foreigners and unpaid social insurance, Isba added.

He vowed to “take strict action against those who do not follow the rules.”

There were no more specific details, but the government said last month it plans to amend its policy to ban tourists and foreign residents with unpaid medical expenses.

Japan’s foreign population has jumped from 2.23 million to 3.77 million over the past decade, but they still only account for 3% of the total population of over 120 million.

More noticeable is the surge in tourism over the past few years, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic.

A record 21.5 million foreign tourists visited Japan According to the Japan National Tourism Organization, this is the first half of this year. Last year, according to UN tourism, Japan was the eighth most visited country in the world by tourists and was the top of Asia.

The influx has frustrated many residents, whose lives are hampered by tourists gathering in their neighborhoods for sightseeing, shopping or scenic photography opportunities.

Authorities urged convenience store mountains to be temporarily blocked from convenience stores as visitors requested private baths as public baths rose sharply as public hot spring resort areas warning low water levels.

Some blame tourists for causing inflation and contributing to the shortage of certain supplies, including rice, which is Japan’s most important staple.

Others have problems with foreign residents who have been reportedly circumventing public health insurance and are reportedly snatching the country’s real estate It will boost prices.

A Tokyo retiree who worked for a trading company told CNN he believes foreign workers are taking away jobs for Japanese people.

“They came to Japan because they couldn’t make a living in their country,” said the 78-year-old, who asked them to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the debate.

“Because the cultures are different, it’s impossible to live together.”

Kouyama Nanami, a 23-year-old office worker, said he read it on the news that a large amount of welfare assistance has been donated to residents during the day.

“I don’t think AIDS is prioritized for the Japanese,” she said.

Tanabe, a sociology professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, said many of the negative beliefs about migration, such as rising crime, stem from falsehoods and misleading claims from the campaign trail.

“There are more foreigners around us that are visible. They start to assume that public safety must be getting worse too,” he told CNN.

“As a result, negative campaigns on social media resonate with many people, leading them to think that the parties who commit to “protect” society from these imaginary threats are a better choice,” he added.

He noted that crime in Japan has declined over the past 20 years despite an increase in tourists and foreign residents. “There is virtually no difference between Japanese citizens and foreigners in terms of crime rates,” he said.

In 2023, according to a white paper by the Ministry of Justice, 9,726 foreigners were arrested on suspicion of crime, accounting for 5.3°C of the total arrested. This diagram includes both tourists and foreigners.

According to political commentators, Isba’s hands were forced as they entered the final stretch and then focused on anger towards irresponsible foreigners and unruly tourists.

Sansate, minor right wing Those who have rallyed against immigrants and advanced “Japan’s first” policies have gained traction and media coverage.

Emerging parties cannot compete for a majority, but are expected to win 10-15 seats, potentially removing the majority of Ishiba’s Liberal Democrats (LDP).

LDP and its coalition partner Komeito lost a majority in the House last year for the first time in 15 years. Isba could pressure him to go down further if he loses the Senate this weekend.

“Anti-immigrant parties such as Sansate use this as a misunderstanding of the people, a public’s fear of immigration and an opportunity for foreigners to steal votes from the LDP,” said Jeffrey Hall, a lecturer in international studies in Japan.

During Sunday’s campaign, Sansate Secretary General Sohei Kamiya said his party “is simply saying it’s unreasonable to use public money to hire foreigners or hire profitable companies.”

“This is not discrimination or hate speech,” he said.

Hall said setting up a new office could help LDPs show that “the problem is tough,” but there is a price to pay.

“If we become a society where Japan is closely monitoring foreigners until it feels unwelcome, it can have a detrimental effect on businesses’ ability to acquire the foreign workers they need,” Hall said.

The country’s birth rate plunged to another record low of 1.15 in 2024. This is well below the 2.1 required to stabilize the population in the absence of immigrants. This means that the working population will continue to shrink in the next few decades. This has deterred the outlook for the Japanese economy, which has already stagnated since the early 1990s.

To attract foreign workers, the government is trying to ease visa requirements and improve conditions.

The number of foreign employees reached a record high of 2.3 million in October last year, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. The government has granted “specific skilled workers” visas to work in a variety of industries, from nursing and hospitality to construction and aviation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website shows.

During the announcement Tuesday, Isba acknowledged the importance of Japan continuing to be open-minded.

“As Japan faces challenges of declining birth rates and aging, it is essential to incorporate the vitality of the international community through the acceptance of a certain number of foreign workers and the expansion of inbound tourism.

CNN
–

Mexico City officials have announced a 14-point plan to address the issue of housing and gentlemanship in the capital.

Mexico City Mayor Clara Bulgada said the agency would propose laws that would regulate rental prices and balance the rights and duties of landlords and tenants, and would suggest laws to prevent people from evacuating and regulating short-term rental properties.

Many residents say they are priced from their neighborhoods. This is, on the one hand, due to the influx of people and businesses with greater purchasing power, short-term housing rentals.

Bulgada said Wednesday that “objective and strict methodology” will be resolved to regulate temporary housing rentals to prevent residents from evacuating and to avoid “loss of community roots and identity.”

The city government will also implement rent laws and establish agencies to punish criminals.

Bulgada said living in Mexico City should be a guaranteed right to all residents, not a privilege of a few.

“The issue of gentrification is one of the most important issues in cities today, but it’s not new either. It’s a problem not only for cities but for the world as well, meaning the movement of thousands of families,” the mayor said.

The proposal comes days after residents will have on July 4th on gentrification and increased cost of living in the Mexican capital.

The demonstrations were largely peaceful and reflected a growing rage over urban inequality, but some protesters destroyed stores in wealthy neighbours and used anti-immigrant languages that Mexican President Claudia Sinbaum criticised for being xenophobia.

Frente Antigentrificación MX, one of several groups that helped organize the protest, opposed the characterization of the Sinbaum, saying the demonstrations were intended to highlight a light letter of people priced from home and demand reform from the government.

“We are not opposed to migration because gentlemanship is not a matter of migration. It’s a human right. We are opposed to violence as a model for government,” spokesman Yeshika Morales told CNN last week.

Morales said that the country’s housing costs have skyrocketed to 286% since 2005, but actual wages have fallen by 33%, citing data from the National Institute of Statistics’ Geography and the Federal Mortgage Association.

The mayor of Mexico City on Wednesday called on protesters to engage in dialogue.

“For those who are promoting marching and mobilising, I say for more reasons I will open up necessary discussions with them about this issue,” she said.

Experts say that the gentlemanship of Mexico City has been happening for decades and immigration alone cannot be blamed. However, the arrival of short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb and remote work policies during the Covid-19 pandemic turbo has imposed a discussion of gentrification in recent years.

Last week, Airbnb defended its activities in Mexico City, claiming that it helped generate more than $1 billion in the local economy last year, with guests who booked accommodation also spending money on shops and services in the capital.

This issue is not specific to Mexico City. All over Europe, tourist destinations are also protesting gentlemanship, but local governments have announced short-term rental restrictions in several cities.