Tel Aviv — The Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant groups fired dozens of rockets from the Gaza Strip toward Tel Aviv and other cities in central Israel on Tuesday night, a new step in the current conflict that is likely to be followed by increased Israeli air strikes in Gaza.
Why it matters: The current crisis began in Jerusalem but has evolved into a military conflict across Israel and Gaza that remains on a path of escalation.
India is dealing with daily new COVID cases well above 300,000, and a new variant, first detected in India, has been declared a global concern by the World Health Organization. Political blowback and calls for a nationwide lockdown are proliferating, even after Prime Minister Narendra Modi had critical Facebook posts removed.
Axios Re:Cap discusses the difficult and deadly situation in India, the political tensions that continue to escalate, and the role of social media during the crisis with New York Times reporter Karan Deep Singh, who is based in New Delhi.
Anthony Fauci and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) got into a heated debate at a Senate health committee hearing on Tuesday, clashing over whether funding from the National Institutes of Health was used for risky "gain-of-function" research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Why it matters: Questions remain about the origins of the coronavirus and the so-called "lab leak hypothesis" — the theory that the virus resulted from experiments in the Wuhan lab that accidentally spilled over, which the head of the World Health Organization has said should be investigated further.
South American governments need to do more to protect their sovereign waters from illegal fishing, Pablo Ferrara tells Axios.
Ferrara is an arbitrator at the Permanent Court of Arbitration for the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and a professor at the Universidad del Salvador in Argentina.
Why it matters: A surge in illegal fishing around the world is depleting fisheries and threatening ecosystems and the livelihoods of local fishers. Chinese fishing fleets, benefitting from government fuel subsidies that allow them to traverse distant oceans, are now a primary culprit.
A showdown between courts in Texas and Wuhan over an intellectual property dispute demonstrates how China is working hard to present itself as a champion of intellectual property (IP) protection.
Why it matters: As China's global influence continues to grow, its domestic regulatory and legal regimes are gaining more international sway as well.
President Biden plans to nominate Rahm Emanuel, former President Obama's chief of staff, as U.S. ambassador to Japan, the Financial Times first reported and Axios has confirmed.
The state of play: Biden plans to announce the nomination later this month, along with a slew of other ambassadorship nominations, per FT.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday ordered the Russian Federal Service of National Guard Troops to start working on new gun regulations following a school shooting that left at least eight people dead, according to the Kremlin.
Driving the news: A gunman on Tuesday morning attacked a school in the city of Kazan and killed seven students and one teacher, while leaving 21 other people hospitalized, AP reports.
Queen Elizabeth II laid out the U.K. government's agenda at the State Opening of Parliament on Tuesday, marking the first Queen's Speech since the pandemic began and her first major public appearance since the death of her husband, Prince Philip.
Why it matters: In a pared-back ceremony, the queen set out Prime Minister Boris Johnson's vision for recovering from a pandemic that inflicted the worst death toll in Europe and worst recession in 300 years.
China's population increased 72 million over the past 10 years to 1.41 billion in 2020, with an annual average growth rate of 0.53%, data published by the country's National Bureau of Statistics Tuesday shows.
Why it matters: It's the slowest population growth for over half a century. The birth rate also dropped for the fourth consecutive year in 2020, with 12 million babies born, raising the prospect of a "demographic crisis that could stunt growth in the world’s second-largest economy," per the New York Times.
