Axios

Secretary of State Tony Blinken couldn't fly back to the U.S. from Davos as planned Wednesday because of a mechanical issue with his airplane, a State Department spokesperson said.

The big picture: The plane Blinken was flying on is a modified Boeing C-40, a U.S. Air Force aircraft assigned to Joint Base Andrews, Rose Riley, a spokesperson for the Air Force said.

China's population fell for the second year in a row in 2023, as deaths outpaced births in what was once the world's most populous country.

Why it matters: China's declining population is emblematic of a demographic downturn that reflects economic and social changes in the country.

Israeli forces will have to contend with Hamas' labyrinthian network of tunnels as they ramp up a ground operation in the Gaza Strip.

The big picture: The tunnels, dubbed by Israel as the "Gaza metro," are vital for Hamas from both an offensive and defensive standpoint. The militants use them to smuggle and store weaponry and evade detection — compounding the immense difficulties of fighting in a dense urban environment.

The Senate on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly to reject a resolution forced to a vote by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) aimed at tying U.S. military assistance for Israel to the country's treatment of Palestinian human rights.

Why it matters: It's a demonstration of the bipartisan support Israel still enjoys in Congress despite pockets of opposition among Democratic lawmakers.

The U.S. "fully anticipated" that Yemen's Houthi rebels would conduct retaliatory strikes after the U.S. and U.K. conducted airstrikes against the group last week, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Tuesday.

Why it matters: Amid fears of an escalation in the Red Sea and growing U.S. military involvement, Kirby stressed that the U.S. is "not looking for a war."

DAVOS, Switzerland — White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said at the World Economic Forum on Tuesday that the Biden administration's strategy for post-war Gaza is to link normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia to the creation of a pathway for the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Why it matters: Sullivan's comments echoed Secretary of State Tony Blinken's private message to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv last week. The Biden administration is hoping to use a potential historic peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia as leverage for getting Israel on board with its plan for what happens in Gaza after the war.

Accelerator programs — in the business world and increasingly the activism space — are helping Latinos thrive in their fields

The big picture: A lack of access to funding along with underrepresentation have made it difficult for Latinos to rise in these spaces.

The war in Gaza is testing the historically strong support evangelical Latinos have given to Israel.

The big picture: Divisions over the Hamas-Israel war highlight bubbling tensions among Latino evangelicals in the U.S. as congregations grow in numbers and become more diverse.

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo's bumpy start to his term points to the difficulties he's likely to face while in office, but there are also glimpses of a path forward for his party and his agenda, a political analyst tells Axios Latino.

State of play: Arévalo and Vice President Karin Herrera of the party Movimiento Semilla were inaugurated in the early hours of Monday after a nine-hour delay caused by the outgoing opposition-held Congress.

U.S. Navy SEALs seized a cache of Iranian-supplied missile parts and other weaponry bound for Yemen's Houthi rebels, U.S. Central Command announced Tuesday.

Driving the news: Search and rescue operations are ongoing for two Navy SEALs who went missing during the mission, CENTCOM said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned those at Davos on Tuesday that Russia's military ambitions extend beyond Moscow's brutal invasion of Ukraine, opening his speech by recounting conflicts around the world in which Russia has been involved.

Why it matters: Amid growing pressure to make concessions to bring the war to a close, Zelensky in part used the speech to assert that a semblance of peace in Ukraine would not last and would not bring an end to Russian aggression around the world.

China's premier Li Qiang assured investors and politicians gathered at Davos on Tuesday that the world's second-largest economy has "huge potential" and remains an "important engine" of global growth, despite the serious economic headwinds the country has seen over the past year.

Why it matters: The remarks come as confidence in China's economy among global investors has fallen to a historic low amid a real estate crisis, heavy local government debt, unemployment, deflation, and weak consumer demand. At the same time, the U.S. and like-minded democracies have sought to delink sensitive supply chains from Chinese manufacturing.

The Biden administration denounced Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for launching missile strikes near the U.S. Consulate in Erbil in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region on Monday night.

The big picture: National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in an emailed statement Monday evening that U.S. officials had seen the report of the IRGC's claims that it took aim at an Israeli "espionage center" and other targets and noted no American personnel or facilities were targeted.