Hard Numbers: Aid group pauses Gaza operations, South Africa’s water crisis, Chinese manufacturing growth, New British Museum probe, Japan’s royal Insta debut

Smoke rises after what the Iranian media said was an Israeli strike on a building close to the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria April 1, 2024.
IMAGO/APAimages via Reuters Connect
7: The disaster relief nonprofit, World Central Kitchen, paused operations in Gaza and the region on Tuesday after the organization said seven of its workers were killed by an IDF airstrike. The group said it was hit shortly after workers finished unloading food aid, despite having coordinated its movements with the Israeli military. The organization has played a critical role in obtaining aid by sea and distributing it to desperate Gazans.

½: About half of Johannesburg’s 5.5 million residents have suffered water shortages, or even full outages, over the past several weeks. This is a major political problem for the African National Congress, which has led South Africa’s government since the end of apartheid in 1994 and now faces a national election next month.

6: Chinese manufacturing activity grew in March for the first time in six months. News of a possible economic upturn will be welcomed by many around the world because China’s weakness has been a major drag on global economic expectations in recent months.

11: A nonprofit information watchdog says the British Museum should return 11 sacred Ethiopian altar tablets looted by British soldiers following the Battle of Maqdala in 1868. Over more than 150 years in the museum’s collection, the wood and stone tablets have never been displayed publicly, and internal debates over their future have remained secret. For more on the debate about “Who Owns Art?”, see our recent GZERO Reports piece, which begins with an Egyptian obelisk in a snowstorm.

1: For its first day on Instagram on Monday, Japan’s Imperial Household posted 19 images, including pictures of Emperor Naruhito, Empress Masako, and their daughter, Princess Aiko, during events from earlier in the year.

More from GZERO Media

A helicopter carrying Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi takes off, near the Iran-Azerbaijan border, May 19, 2024. The helicopter with Raisi on board later crashed.
Ali Hamed Haghdoust/IRNA/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

The fate of Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian remains uncertain after their helicopter crashed on Sunday in northwestern Iran.

Why was Slovakia's Prime Minister attacked? | Europe In: 60

What was the background to the attempted assassination of the Prime Minister of Slovakia? Are there really risks of a new wave of Russian attempts to destabilize Europe? Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares his perspective on European politics from Tallinn, Estonia.

Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.
REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/Elizabeth Frantz

After months of circling each other, Joe Biden and Donald Trump abruptly agreed this week to face off in not one, but two televised presidential debates. The first will be in late June, the second in mid-September.

Slovakian President-elect Peter Pellegrini gestures, at F.D. Roosevelt University Hospital where Prime Minister Robert Fico was taken after a shooting incident in Handlova, in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia, May 16, 2024.
REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico survived Wednesday’s assassination attempt “by a hair,” said President-elect Peter Pellegrini on Thursday, as authorities reported that the shooter was a “lone wolf” without providing further details.

US troops commenced work on the construction of the floating pier that will bring humanitarian aid into Gaza on Monday
Reuters

“The last thing Biden wants is dead US soldiers or servicemen in Gaza or a situation where he has to put boots on the ground,” says Gregory Brew, a Eurasia Group analyst.

US President Joe Biden deliver remarks on American investments before signing documents related the China tariffs in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington on May 14, 2024.
Yuri Gripas/ABACAPRESS

Joe Biden employed executive privilege to deny House Republicans access to recordings of his interview with Robert Hur, the special counsel investigating the president’s handling of sensitive government documents.