At least 242 million students had their education disrupted last year because of heatwaves, cyclones, floods and other extreme weather events, the United Nations children’s agency has said.
In a report released on Friday, UNICEF stated that heatwaves were the most disruptive climate event, with widespread school closures and shorter schooling hours in Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Cambodia.
According to UNICEF, Afghanistan was one of the nations that was affected by multiple climate hazards, with the nation experiencing severe flash floods and heatwaves that left more than 110 schools damaged or destroyed in May.
Global temperatures hit an all-time high in 2024, with the Earth’s average surface temperature rising 1.55 degrees Celsius (2.79 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1850-1900 average, according to the World Meteorological Organization.
“Children are more vulnerable to the impacts of weather-related crises, including stronger and more frequent heatwaves, storms, droughts and flooding”, UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said.
“Children’s bodies are uniquely vulnerable. They drouch less, they sweat less, and they cool down more slowly than adults. If the path is flooded or the schools are washed away, children can’t concentrate in classrooms that offer no respite from the sweltering heat.
In total, 85 countries experienced climate-related school disruptions, including 20 countries that saw disruptions nationwide, according to UNICEF.
Of the nearly 250 million students affected, 74 percent were in middle and low-income countries.
South Asia was the worst-affected region, with about 128 million students facing climate-related upheaval, followed by East Asia and the Pacific, according to UNICEF.
September recorded the most frequent disruptions, with at least 18 countries suspending classes, according to the UN agency.
One of the services that is most frequently hampered by climate risk is education. Yet it is often overlooked in policy discussions, despite its role in preparing children for climate adaptation”, Russell said.
After receiving a formal letter from US President Donald Trump this week, the US will officially leave the World Health Organization (WHO) in January 2026.
After Trump pledged to end US funding of the organization on Monday in his first day in office, UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said on Thursday that the withdrawal was now underway.
“I can confirm that the US letter regarding the WHO withdrawal has been received. It is dated 22 January 2025. It would take effect a year from yesterday, on 22 January 2026”, Haq said.
Additionally, Trump directed Marco Rubio, the US government’s director of management and budget, to “pause the upcoming transfer of any United States Government funds, supports, or resources to the WHO.”
Washington has ordered the US government’s representatives to stop participating in negotiations for a WHO-led global treaty on pandemics. They are also requesting that the US government recalled all US government employees who work with the WHO.
The WHO will lose its most significant financial backer as a result of the US’s exit.
The US contributes about 18 percent of the organisation’s funding, which amounted to about $261m between 2024 and 2025. China comes in second with $181 million, followed by that contribution. According to experts, the WHO’s ability to address major crises like tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and global pandemies will be affected by the organization’s loss of its top donor.
In his first year in office, Trump had requested to leave the organization in July 2020 after he had accused the WHO of handling the COVID-19 pandemic.
When Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, who immediately withdrew the order once in office, that withdrawal attempt was thwarted.
Numerous health experts accuse Trump and his administration of stifling the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Americans.
The WHO expressed regret over the US’s announcement to leave and said its work “plays a crucial role in protecting the health and security of the world’s people, including Americans.”
The WHO stated, “We hope the United States will reconsider, and we look forward to engaging in constructive dialogue to maintain the partnership between the United States and WHO, for the benefit of the health and well-being of millions of people around the world.”
According to Jean Galbraith, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, whether Trump unilaterally withdraws from the US membership without congressional approval is a question mark since the US joined the WHO in 1948 through joint resolutions from both Congressional houses.
Trump’s Republican party controls both the US Senate and House of Representatives, but the withdrawal could still be challenged in court, legal experts said. Trump opted to leave the WHO in a nutshell. But we joined WHO in 1948 by an act of Congress. Trump needs Congress ‘ approval to withdraw”, Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, wrote on social media.
Without the help of Congress and the courts, his decision was too catastrophic. As director of a WHO Center, I am considering a lawsuit”, Gostin said.
Trump unilaterally decided to leave the WHO. But we joined WHO in 1948 by an act of Congress. Trump needs Congress ‘ approval to withdraw. Without the help of Congress and the courts, his decision is too catastrophic. As director of a WHO Center, I am considering a lawsuit.
The subject of enduring conspiracy theories for decades has been the release and declassification of all remaining files relating to the assassination of former US President John F. Kennedy.
The last remaining documents from Robert F. Kennedy, JFK’s younger brother, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassinations are also required by Trump’s executive order, which was signed on Thursday.
“This is a big one. As Trump signed the order at the White House, “a lot of people have been anticipating this for years, for decades.”
“And everything will be revealed”.
The Director of National Intelligence must submit a plan within 15 days for the “full and complete release” of files related to JFK’s assassination, as well as a plan within 45 days for the release of documents on the other two assassinations, according to Trump’s order.
The circumstances of JFK’s assassination in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, have transfixed Americans for decades, with surveys showing widespread doubt about official explanations of the killing.
In a 2023 Gallup poll, 65 percent of Americans said they did not believe the Warren Commission’s finding that Lee Harvey Oswald, a US Marine veteran arrested over JFK’s death, acted alone in killing the president.
One in two people said they thought Oswald had a plot to extort money from the US government, while one in two said they thought he had worked for the CIA.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, Trump’s nominee for health secretary and the son of Robert F Kennedy, claimed in a 2023 interview that there was “overwhelming” evidence of CIA involvement in his uncle’s killing and “very convincing” but “circumstantial” evidence that the intelligence agency was involved in his father’s death.
After signing his order at the Oval Office, Trump handed the pen he used to an aide, saying, “Give that to RFK Jr”.
Criticising Trump’s order, Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of JFK, said his grandfather’s death had not been part of an “inevitable grand scheme”.
When JFK isn’t here to punch back, declassification uses him as a political prop. There’s nothing heroic about it”, Schlossberg, who works as a political correspondent for Vogue magazine, said in a post on X.
A law was passed in the US Congress in 1992 mandating that any unfinished files from the JFK assassination be made public within 25 years unless the president decided that the threat to national security outweighed the public interest in disclosure.
Prior to the 2017 deadline, Trump demanded that more than 2,800 documents be made public, but he caved and resisted the CIA and FBI’s demands to keep a number of thousands of additional documents pending review.
More than 4,700 documents were ordered by the former US President Joe Biden administration, leaving approximately 17, 000 more withheld in part or in full.
In total, more than 99 percent of some 320, 000 documents reviewed since the passage of the 1992 law have been released, according to The National Archives.
King, whose “I Have a Dream” speech became a defining moment of Black Americans ‘ struggle for equality, was fatally shot outside a motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.
Taichung, Taiwan – For one user on the Chinese social media platform, Weibo, the problem was Americans.
“British people make me anxious too, but I hate Americans,” read the user’s comment.
For another, it was Japanese.
“I really hope the Japanese die,” the user repeated 25 times in a post.
Xenophobic and hyper-nationalistic comments are easy to come by on Chinese social media platforms, even after some of the country’s biggest tech firms last year pledged to crack down on hate speech following a series of knife attacks on Japanese and American nationals in the country.
Since the summer, there have been at least four stabbings of foreign nationals in China, including an incident in September in which a 10-year-old Japanese schoolboy was killed in Shenzhen.
The attack, which took place on the anniversary of a false flag event orchestrated by Japanese military personnel to justify the invasion of Manchuria, prompted the Japanese government to demand an explanation from its Chinese counterpart as well as assurances that it would do more to protect Japanese nationals.
Following the incident, some Japanese companies offered to repatriate their staff and their families home.
A woman lays flowers outside Shenzhen Japanese School in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China on September 19, 2024 [David Kirton/Reuters]
Months earlier, a knife attack that injured four American college instructors in Jilin placed United States-China relations under strain, with US Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns accusing Chinese authorities of not being forthcoming with information about the incident, including the motive of the assailant.
Beijing, while expressing regret over the attacks and condolences to the families of the victims, has insisted the spate of stabbings were isolated incidents.
“Similar cases could happen in any country,” Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told a regular media briefing after the attack in Shenzhen.
While China’s Foreign Ministry and the Chinese embassy in Tokyo did not respond to requests for comment, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC said Chinese law “clearly prohibits the use of the internet to spread extremism, ethnic hatred, discrimination, violence and other information”.
“The Chinese government has always opposed any form of discrimination and hate speech, and calls on all sectors of society to jointly maintain the order and security of cyberspace,” the spokesperson told Al Jazeera.
While violence against foreigners in China is rare, the apparent rise in attacks in 2024 and the prevalence of hate speech online has prompted concern within the country, said Wang Zichen, a former Chinese state media journalist and the founder of the newsletter Pekingnology.
“It has set into motion domestic discussions about this kind of speech and how to restrain it,” Wang told Al Jazeera.
Despite pledges by Chinese tech companies to crack down on hate speech against foreigners, policing such content is far from straightforward, according to Andrew Devine, a PhD student at Tulane University in the US who specialises in the authoritarian politics of China.
“Especially since the [tech] companies have incentives to not control hate speech,” Devine told Al Jazeera.
While the algorithms used by Chinese social media platforms to distribute content have been shared with the Chinese government, they have not been disclosed to the public, making it difficult to know the exact mechanism by which hate speech proliferates online.
Elena Yi-Ching Ho, an independent research analyst focusing on propaganda and social media in China, said the algorithms used by Chinese social media platforms are most likely not dissimilar to those used by platforms outside the country.
“They want to maximize engagement between users on their platforms, and they want users to stay on their platform for as long as possible,” Ho told Al Jazeera.
In the hunt for users’ attention, it can be lucrative for Chinese influencers and vloggers to seek out controversy with hyper-nationalistic content, Ho said.
In today’s China, a perceived lack of patriotism can draw public ire.
Last year, Chinese water bottle company Nongfu Spring had its bottles removed from stores en masse after social media users claimed that a company logo depicted Mount Fuji in Japan.
Online condemnation spread to the company’s owner, Zhong Shanshan, who had his loyalty to China questioned, a charge amplified by the fact that his son holds American citizenship.
In 2023, a rock and eggs were thrown at two Japanese schools in Qingdao and Suzhou after Tokyo decided to release treated radioactive wastewater from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea.
Wang said the proliferation of negative commentary about foreigners on Chinese social media has been partly a result of growing hostility between China and some other countries.
“Chinese relations with some countries have deteriorated quite significantly in recent years,” Wang said.
China and Japan have sparred over a number of historical and territorial disputes, including the status of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.
The Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands pictured in September 2012 [Reuters/Kyodo]
The US and China have also seen relations plummet in recent years amid disputes over topics ranging from trade and the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic to Beijing’s claims of ownership over self-ruled Taiwan.
But hate speech towards foreigners predates some of these recent clashes, according to Ho.
“And Japan and Japanese have been particular targets of it,” she said.
Some Chinese bloggers and social media users have traced the roots of negative sentiment towards Japanese people to what they term “hate education” about Japan, including its imperial-era abuses in China.
Wang said Japan’s actions during World War II deeply affected China’s national psyche.
“Japan launched invasions in the Second World War where as many as tens of millions of Chinese people died, and that remains on a lot of Chinese people’s minds today,” he said.
“For some people, there is a feeling that the Japanese haven’t done enough to atone for that. ”
Still, some Chinese citizens argue that Japan’s atrocities should not be used to justify hateful sentiment towards Japanese people today.
“I think we need to change the way we are dealing with our past if we want to see less hate speech,” Tina Wu, a 29-year-old social media manager in Shanghai, told Al Jazeera.
While hate speech is not solely a problem on China’s internet, Chinese social media platforms, unlike those in the US, operate in a heavily censored environment where crackdowns on sensitive topics are a semi-constant occurrence.
China has the world’s least free internet environment along with Myanmar, according to a report on 72 countries by US-based nonprofit Freedom House.
In 2020, more than 35,000 words related to Chinese President Xi Jinping alone were subjected to censorship, according to the China Digital Times.
A results page on China’s Baidu search engine pictured on March 31, 2018 [Fred Dufour/AFP]
Devine said while some hateful commentary is subject to censorship, content that echoes the Chinese government’s official position is less likely to be removed.
He said he does not believe that Chinese tech companies’ promise of cracking down on xenophobia and hate speech will do much to change the proliferation of such content.
“At the same time, the tech companies want to avoid taking on the extra cost of policing it,” he said.
No matter the incentives, social media platforms with more than one billion active users cannot realistically stamp out every instance of hate speech, Wang said.
“There’s so much information and more is constantly being added that there’s simply no way to eradicate or eliminate all of it,” he said.
“Even Chinese moderation capacities have their limits. ”
Wang said he is optimistic that China’s friendly exchanges with some countries recently and the country’s rising power and influence will lead to less anti-foreigner sentiment.
“China should have the confidence of walking into the future with a greater sense of security and confidence instead of still being haunted by the memories of the past,” he said.
Wu from Shanghai likewise said she hopes to see a reevaluation of some of the dominant narratives in China, particularly relating to foreigners.
“It’s a big part of the Chinese story right now that we’re constantly the victims of foreign aggression,” she said.
United States President Donald Trump has cancelled security protections for Mike Pompeo, Brian Hook and John Bolton, hawkish foreign policy advisers who served during his first term in office.
The New York Times broke the story on Thursday about Trump revoking protection for Pompeo, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
According to anonymous sources familiar with the matter, Trump’s order took effect on Wednesday at 11pm Eastern Time (04:00 GMT, Thursday), stripping both Pompeo and Hook, a former top aide, of their security details.
That follows an earlier report that Trump did the same for Bolton, his former national security adviser. Bolton confirmed the news to CNN with a statement on Tuesday: “I am disappointed but not surprised. ”
Trump has since defended that decision, calling Bolton a “very dumb person”.
“We’re not going to have security on people for the rest of their lives. Why should we? ” Trump said.
But critics point out that Bolton, Pompeo and Hook have all faced alleged assassination threats from Iran.
The three leaders had taken a hardline stance against Iran throughout their foreign policy careers. Some analysts have speculated whether Trump’s decision to revoke their security details could be a form of retribution for perceived disloyalty.
One official from the administration of former President Joe Biden confirmed to The Associated Press, on condition of anonymity, that Trump’s team was well aware of the threats to the three men.
That person called Trump’s decision “highly irresponsible”.
Bolton had irked Trump with his public criticism after being ejected as national security adviser in 2019. He had served under previous Republican presidents including George W Bush and Ronald Reagan.
In his memoir, Bolton wrote harshly of Trump’s leadership. “A mountain of facts demonstrates that Trump is unfit to be president,” Bolton said.
Pompeo, meanwhile, has been less vocal in his criticisms, but he briefly flirted with a possible run in the 2024 presidential election, before low polling numbers sank his hopes. He went on to campaign on Trump’s behalf in 2024.
During Trump’s first term, from 2017 to 2021, Pompeo and Hook were architects of the US’s stance of “maximum pressure” towards Iran.
That period was marked by the US withdrawing from a detail to limit Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons in exchange for relief from devastating US sanctions.
It is unclear whether Trump will pursue a similar strategy during his second term.
But some experts have speculated that members of Trump’s inner circle have become more critical of the interventionist, assertive stance advocated by figures like Bolton and Pompeo.
Trump had said that Pompeo would play no role in his administration. This week, he also announced on social media that Hook had been fired from his presidentially appointed position at the Wilson Center, a think tank.
On January 15, army leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan announced a probe into the alleged abuses committed by his forces in Gezira state.
The Sudanese army also released a statement addressing the allegations of reprisal killings in Gezira.
“The Armed Forces condemn the individual violations that recently took place in some areas in Gezira state following the cleansing [of the RSF] of Wad Madani,” the statement read.
“At the same time, the army affirms its strict adherence to international law and its keenness to hold accountable anyone involved in any violations that affect anyone in the Kanabi area,” the statement added.
Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan visits casualties receiving treatment at a hospital in the southeastern Gadarif state on April 10, 2024 [File: AFP]
Dalia Abdelmonem, a Sudanese political commentator and former journalist, told Al Jazeera the army’s statement ticked all the boxes in terms of promising to bring about accountability for the abuses in Wad Madani. Yet, it must behave better for the sake of securing international support to defeat the RSF.
“This is a perfect opportunity for the army to show it is a bonified army and it will only target the RSF [moving forward] and not civilians and that it will no longer abuse, torture or commit summary executions, said Abdelmonem.
“It has to say, ‘We will put a stop to all of that,’” she told Al Jazeera.
Since the war, the RSF has demonstrated little ability to govern territories under its control, with fighters often looting, kidnapping for ransom and generating chaos, according to a recent report by International Crisis Group, a think tank based in Brussels, Belgium.
Many Sudanese, therefore, view the RSF as an existential threat to the state despite their acute concerns and traditional opposition towards the army, which stems from its poor human rights record and refusal to fully surrender power to a civilian authority after al-Bashir was toppled by a popular uprising in 2019.
While the army has regained popularity during the war, Baldo is not optimistic that an investigation will lead to accountability for atrocities committed in Wad Madani since human rights violations are a systemic issue in the army.
He referenced the beheading in February and said the army promised to investigate that incident, but nobody was held accountable.
