PUEAA

Chinese officials are trying to lift the country’s birth rate, but high child care costs, gender discrimination and lack of work-life balance deter many women from having children.

Macron visits Kazakhstan on strategic tour of Central Asia

ALJAZEERA

The French president is seeking to compete with Russia and China for influence in Central Asia.

Bangladesh garment worker protests halt production for top fashion brands

FRANCE 24

Levi's and H&M are among top global clothing brands to suffer production halts in Bangladesh, a garment union leader said Friday, after days of violent protests by workers demanding a near-tripling of their wages.

Yemen’s Houthis say they launched ballistic missiles, drones at Israel

ALJAZEERA

Israeli military says it destroyed an unidentified ‘aerial target’ and separately intercepted surface-to-surface missile over the Red Sea.

Rwanda announces visa-free travel for all Africans as continent opens up to free movement of people

AP NEWS

Rwanda announced Thursday that it will allow Africans to travel visa-free to the country, becoming the latest nation on the continent to announce such a measure aimed at boosting free movement of people and trade to rival Europe’s Schengen zone.

Charles III meets with religious leaders as he wraps up Kenya visit

AFRICA NEWS

The King, on a rainy Friday morning, visited East Africa region’s oldest mosque, and the Anglican cathedral of Mombasa where he met leaders from the Christian, Hindu, Muslim and African Traditional Faiths.

‘More Than Just Rugby’: Championship Generates Harmony in South Africa

THE NEW YORK TIMES

The towering hall thundered with the euphoria of a nation where everyone seemed, for the moment, to have left their differences behind. The celebrants spoke Zulu, Sotho, Tswana, Afrikaans and English. They were Black and white, young and old, mining company managers and restaurant waitresses. They sang and danced together to songs blasting from speakers. They waved South African flags. They wore the same green-and-gold attire of their rugby heroes as they gathered at the Oliver Reginald Tambo airport in Johannesburg on Tuesday to welcome the team home from the championship game in France. A bronze statue of Tambo with a hand aloft stood among the jubilation, as if bestowing his blessing upon a scene made possible by the work he did to topple apartheid.

Large parts of Asia are getting old before they get rich

THE ECONOMIST

A bulge in a country’s working-age population is a blessing. Lots of workers support relatively few children and retired people. So long as the labour market can absorb a surge of job-seekers, output per head will rise. That can boost savings and investment, leading to higher economic growth, more productivity gains and developmental lift-off. Yet for countries that fail to seize this opportunity, the results can be grim—as many developing countries may soon discover.