Clashes between government security forces and supporters of ousted former President Bashar al-Assad have killed at least 311 people in Syria since Thursday, according to a monitoring group that warns the actual death toll could be “much higher.”

Meanwhile, militants loyal to Assad have killed a further 147 people – 26 civilians and 121 security forces – SNHR’s director Fadel Abdul Ghani said.

“We expect the death toll to be much higher,” Ghani added.

The ongoing clashes are the worst outbreak of violence since Assad – a member of the minority Alawite sect – was toppled in December by Sunni Islamist militants who sought to reshape the country’s political and sectarian order.

Syria’s transitional president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, in a televised speech on Friday evening, vowed to pursue those responsible for killing the government’s security personnel. However, he also urged his security forces to “ensure no excessive or unjustified responses occur” following reports of the high number of civilian casualties.

The latest surge in violence highlights the challenges Syria’s new regime faces in appeasing disenfranchised groups, especially those that remain heavily armed.

Latakia and Tartous on the Mediterranean coast are areas where support among Syrian Alawites for Assad was strong. Alawites – some 10% of the population – were prominent in the Assad regime, and while many Alawites have surrendered their weapons since December, many others have not.

Assad, who fled to Russia in December, has not commented on the escalating clashes.

On Saturday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) expressed extreme concern over reports of the high numbers of people being killed and injured in the two provinces.

It called for both sides to treat detainees “humanely and in a dignified manner,” and protect healthcare facilities and water and electricity infrastructure.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Friday said he “strongly condemns all violence in Syria and calls on the parties to protect civilians and cease hostilities.”

Guterres said he was “alarmed by the risk of escalating tensions among communities in Syria at a time when reconciliation and peaceful political transition should be the priority.”

Syria’s civil war began during the Arab Spring in 2011 as a peaceful uprising against Assad. The conflict killed more than 300,000 in the first decade of fighting, according to the United Nations, and has left the country deeply fractured.

North Korea unveiled for the first time a nuclear-powered submarine under construction, a weapons system that can pose a major security threat to South Korea and the US.

State media on Saturday released photos showing what it called “a nuclear-powered strategic guided missile submarine,” as it reported leader Kim Jong Un’s visits to major shipyards where warships are built.

The Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA, didn’t provide details on the submarine, but said Kim was briefed on its construction.

The naval vessel appears to be a 6,000-ton-class or 7,000-ton-class one which can carry about 10 missiles, said Moon Keun-sik, a South Korean submarine expert who teaches at Seoul’s Hanyang University. He said the use of the term “the strategic guided missiles” meant it would carry nuclear-capable weapons.

“It would be absolutely threatening to us and the US,” Moon said.

A nuclear-powered submarine was among a long wishlist of sophisticated weaponry that Kim vowed to introduce during a major political conference in 2021 to cope with what he called escalating US-led military threats. Other weapons were solid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons, spy satellites and multi-warhead missiles. North Korea has since performed a run of testing activities to acquire them.

North Korea obtaining a greater ability to fire missiles from underwater is a worrying development because it’s difficult for its rivals to detect such launches in advance.

Questions about how North Korea, a heavily sanctioned and impoverished country, could get resources and technology to build nuclear-powered submarines have surfaced.

Moon, the submarine expert, said North Korea may have received Russian technological assistance to build a nuclear reactor to be used in the submarine in return for supplying conventional weapons and troops to support Russia’s war efforts against Ukraine.

He also said North Korea could launch the submarine in one or two years to test its capability before its actual deployment.

North Korea has an estimated 70-90 diesel-powered submarines in one of the world’s largest fleets. However, they are mostly aging ones capable of launching only torpedoes and mines, not missiles.

In 2023, North Korea said it had launched what it called its first “tactical nuclear attack submarine,” but foreign experts doubted the North’s announcement and speculated it was likely a diesel-powered submarine disclosed in 2019. Moon said there has been no confirmation that it has been deployed.

North Korea has conducted a slew of underwater-launched ballistic missile tests since 2016, but all launches were made from the same 2,000-ton-class submarine which has a single launch tube.

Many experts call it a test platform, rather than an operational submarine in active service.

In recent days, North Korea has been dialing up its fiery rhetoric against the US and South Korea ahead of their upcoming annual military drills set to start Monday.

During his visits to the shipyards, Kim said North Korea aims to modernize water-surface and underwater warships simultaneously.

He stressed the need to make “the incomparably overwhelming warships fulfill their mission” to contain “the inveterate gunboat diplomacy of the hostile forces,” KCNA reported Saturday.

Ukraine’s presence in Russia’s Kursk region has deteriorated sharply, with the advance threatening Kyiv’s sole territorial bargaining counter at a crucial time in the war.

Military bloggers from both sides say Ukraine is on the back foot – reports say Russian forces used a gas pipeline to launch a surprise raid in one area. Russia’s defense ministry on Saturday said its forces had captured three more settlements.

Ukraine launched its shock incursion into Kursk in August, swiftly capturing territory in what was the first ground invasion of Russia by a foreign power since World War II.

As well as capturing land that could potentially be swapped for Russian-occupied territory, the campaign aimed to divert Moscow’s resources from the frontline east.

But since then, Ukraine has struggled to hold onto its territory in Kursk and faces a fundamentally transformed diplomatic picture, with US President Donald Trump piling pressure on Kyiv to agree peace by halting military aid and intelligence sharing.

Ukrainian and Russian military bloggers warn Kyiv’s hold on the region is more tenuous than ever, with Russian troops backed by North Korean forces launching incessant attacks.

The latest reports suggest Russia is targeting Sudzha, a town on the border, in an attempt to cut off a key logistical supply route to Ukraine’s forces.

Yuriy Butusov, a Ukrainian military blogger, said Russian forces had on Saturday entered Sudzha through a gas pipeline.

“The Russians used a gas pipeline to deploy an assault company undetected by drones and wedged themselves into our combat formations,” Butusov wrote. He added that the pipeline was now under reinforced surveillance and that Moscow’s troops there were being “eliminated.”

However, Butusov warned that Russian and North Korean troops in Kursk region are at a “significant advantage in strength” and are “attacking continuously.”

Some 12,000 North Korean troops have been deployed to Kursk, and their arrival has bolstered Russia’s offensive operations inside its own borders. Should Russia retake all of Kursk it could potentially pour its manpower into eastern Ukraine.

An unofficial Russian military blogger gave a similar account in the town of Sudzha, claiming that around 100 Russian soldiers had infiltrated the settlement after sneaking in via the pipeline – a move which he said was made possible after Kyiv shut off Russian gas supplies to the European Union via Ukraine on January 1.

Russian forces are attacking Sudzha from several directions, according to Yuriy Kotenok, a Russian military blogger.

“Any movements of the enemy in this area are detected by our drones and the enemy’s personnel and equipment are being struck,” he wrote on Telegram.

Kotenok also claimed that there is “information” that Ukraine is going to withdraw from the Kursk region, “based on the current situation.”

Sternenko, a Ukrainian blogger, said the logistics situation was “already critical.”

Another difficulty was the “poor conditions of the roads,” Sternenko said. With spring bringing warmer temperatures, the ground will thaw, making roads muddier and even harder to traverse, he said. “All these circumstances are very favorable to the Russians,” he added.

Kyiv’s fear is that Russia’s gains could cut off supplies to Ukrainian troops in Kursk. In a major report last month, the Institute for the Study of War, a US-based conflict monitor, estimated that Ukraine has at most 30,000 troops stationed in the region.

The Kursk incursion was embarrassing for Moscow and raised questions over its ability to protect its own borders. Russian President Vladimir Putin has since repeatedly pledged his forces would regain full control of the region.

Kyiv has since lost about half of the territory it once occupied in Kursk.

In the face of Russia’s gains, some Ukrainian bloggers have suggested that the Kursk incursion may have exhausted its strategic value.

“I didn’t think I would ever say this. But maybe it’s time to ‘close the shop’ from the Kursk direction. It’s hard for our guys there,” said Serhii Flesh. “As a diversion of enemy resources, I think this operation has long since justified itself. As a political bargaining card, it is now questionable.”

A vital, US-run monitoring system focused on spotting food crises before they turn into famines has gone dark after the Trump administration slashed foreign aid.

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) monitors drought, crop production, food prices and other indicators in order to forecast food insecurity in more than 30 countries.

Funded by USAID and managed by contractor Chemonics International, the project employs researchers in the United States and across the globe to provide eight-month projections of where food crises will emerge.

Now, its work to prevent hunger in Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and many other nations has been stopped amid the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

“These are the most acutely food insecure countries around the globe,” said Tanya Boudreau, the former manager of the project.

Amid the aid freeze, FEWS NET has no funding to pay staff in Washington or those working on the ground. The website is down. And its treasure trove of data that underpinned global analysis on food security – used by researchers around the world – has been pulled offline.

FEWS NET is considered the gold-standard in the sector, and it publishes more frequent updates than other global monitoring efforts. Those frequent reports and projections are key, experts say, because food crises evolve over time, meaning early interventions save lives and save money.

US Secretary of State Macro Rubio, now the acting administrator of USAID, has repeatedly said he has issued a blanket waiver for lifesaving programs, including food and medical aid.

“But very soon, if the food assistance does continue to flow, but FEWS NET is not there, then there isn’t any good mechanism, at least no internal mechanism within the US, to help determine where that assistance is most needed.”

“It serves the US government, but it also serves the rest of the humanitarian community too. So, its absence will be felt pretty much right away,” said Maxwell, a professor of food security at Tufts University and a member of the Famine Review Committee for the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system.

The IPC, another mechanism to monitor food insecurity, is a global coalition backed by UN agencies, NGOs and multiple governments, including the United States.

While the two systems’ functions have become more overlapping in recent years to some degree, a key difference is that the IPC analysis for specific countries is conducted on a volunteer basis, while FEWS NET has full-time staff to focus on early warning of future crises.

Maxwell said that while there are other famine monitoring mechanisms, FEWS NET was the system that “most regularly updates its assessments and its forecasts.”

‘Decades’ of data taken offline

FEWS NET was created following the 1984 famine in Ethiopia, which killed an estimated 400,000 to 1 million people – and caught the world off guard. President Ronald Reagan then challenged the US government to create a system to provide early warning and inform international relief efforts in an evidence-based way.

The system going dark means that “even other governments that were using our [US] data to try to provide food relief to their own people can’t even access this,” said Evan Thomas, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“This is, at this point, quite petty – we’re not even spending money to host a website that has data on it, and now we’ve taken that down so that other people around the world can’t use information that can save lives,” Thomas said.

The team at the University of Colorado Boulder has built a model to forecast water demand in Kenya, which feeds some data into the FEWS NET project but also relies on FEWS NET data provided by other research teams.

The data is layered and complex. And scientists say pulling the data hosted by the US disrupts other research and famine-prevention work conducted by universities and governments across the globe.

“Imagine that that data is available to regions like Africa and has been utilized for years and years – decades – to help inform divisions that mitigate catastrophic impacts from weather and climate events, and you’re taking that away from the region,” Muthike said. He cautioned that it would take many years to build another monitoring service that could reach the same level.

“That basically means that we might be back to the era where people used to die because of famine, or because of serious floods,” Muthike added.

As US President Donald Trump ratcheted up economic pressure on China over the past week, Beijing sent back its own message: Its rise won’t be interrupted.

A major political meeting taking place in the capital was the ideal backdrop for Beijing to respond. The “two sessions” gathering of China’s rubber-stamp legislature and its top political advisory body is where the government reveals its plans and sets the tone for the year ahead.

The top item on its priority list? Boosting consumer demand to ensure China doesn’t need to rely on exports to power its vast but slowing economy. And the next: driving forward leader Xi Jinping’s bid to transform the country into a technological superpower, by ramping up investment and enlisting the private sector.

Beijing is making these moves as it prepares for what could be a protracted economic showdown with the United States. Trump doubled additional tariffs on all Chinese imports to 20% on Tuesday and has threatened more to come – as well as tighter controls on American investment in China.

“We can prevail over any difficulty in pursuing development,” China’s No. 2 official Li Qiang told thousands of delegates seated in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People at the opening meeting of the National People’s Congress Wednesday. The “giant ship of China’s economy” will “sail steadily toward the future,” he said.

A foreign ministry spokesperson was more direct when asked about trade frictions on Tuesday: “If the US insists on waging a tariff war, trade war, or any other kind of war, China will fight till the end,” he told reporters.

And while Beijing’s priorities – and rhetoric – may echo those of years past, this time they are coming from a country that is starting to regain its swagger after being battered by its own Covid restrictions, a property sector crisis and by a tech war with the US.

“Confidence” has been an unofficial buzzword of the weeklong event, which ends Tuesday. It was used nearly a dozen times during a press conference held by China’s economic tsars on Thursday, splashed across state media coverage and included in a pointed reminder – that “confidence builds strength”– during the closing lines of Li’s nationally broadcast speech.

That optimism might be more aspiration than reality. Many in China are looking to the future with uncertainty. They’re more willing to save than spend, while young people are struggling to find jobs and feeling unsure whether their lives will be better than those of their parents.

But unlike last year, the country is entering 2025 buoyed by the market-moving successes of Chinese firms and technology. And while Trump’s return has Beijing concerned about economic risks, it’s also eyeing opportunity for its own rise.

Confidence boost

This mood isn’t just percolating in the halls of power.

On the streets of the capital, gleaming homegrown electric vehicles weave through traffic, including those from carmaker BYD, which now goes toe-to-toe with Elon Musk’s Tesla for global sales – a reminder of China’s successful push to become a leader in green tech.

Then there’s the box office record-smashing animation “Ne Zha 2” and the breakout success of privately owned Chinese AI firm DeepSeek. Its large language model shocked Silicon Valley and upended Western assumptions about the costs associated with AI.

In Beijing this week, “you can ask DeepSeek” has been a playful and proud punchline in casual conversation.

“Last year, people may have been impacted by the US narrative that China is declining, that China has peaked,” said Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University in Beijing. “We still have many difficulties. We still have many problems, of course, but it’s not that we’ve reached peak China.”

“China is developing quickly now and that’s attracted international attention, especially from the United States,” but that may not be a bad thing, said a medical graduate student surnamed Xia. “Trump’s increase on tariffs is competition … (and) if there’s no competition maybe China’s independent development is not sustainable.”

High stakes rivalry

But even as Chinese officials seek to project confidence, international observers say the economic stimulus measures announced this week show Beijing is girding itself for major challenges to come.

Premier Li alluded to that in his opening address. “The external environment is becoming more complex and severe, which may have a greater impact on the country’s trade, science and technology and other fields,” he said.

China doesn’t want to deal with that volatility while also grappling with a weak economy at home. That’s one reason why it’s trying to boost consumption and spur growth, setting an ambitious expansion target of “around 5%” this year. Beijing is also aware that trade frictions mean the economy needs to rely less on exports.

“It is likely that Beijing has thought through the scenarios of Trade War 2.0, but whatever happens, it is clear that China’s growth will have to rely more on domestic demand,” said Bert Hofman, a professor at the East Asian Institute at the National University Singapore and former World Bank country director for China, in a note.

Still, some analysts say Beijing’s initiatives are short on details and much less aggressive than needed to rev up the economy and boost consumer confidence.

“It adds up to a sense by the leadership that they want to refocus on growth and development, but still a desire to do only as much as necessary in terms of stimulus to get there,” said Michael Hirson, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.

Xi may also be balancing this goal with another concern: a need to save some firepower to support the economy if China faces “a nasty four years dealing with Donald Trump,” he said.

Beijing also wants to direct resources toward the high-tech transformation of its economy and industries. That’s another key part of the government’s 2025 agenda – and a long-term objective of Xi, who unlike US presidents is not subject to term limits on his leadership.

Beijing is pushing for innovations in AI, robotics, 6G and quantum computing, announcing a state-backed fund to support tech innovation and even welcoming foreign enterprises – in a significant tone shift for Xi – to play a role.

China is still smarting from the first Trump administration’s campaign to keep its tech champion Huawei out of global mobile networks and from the Biden administration’s efforts to convince allies to join it in cutting Chinese access to advanced semiconductors.

Last month, Washington said it was considering expanding restrictions on US investment in sensitive technologies in China.

But Beijing this week has also touted its confidence in advancing no matter the barriers.

“Be it space science or chip making, unjustified external suppression has never stopped,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters Friday. “But where there is blockade, there is breakthrough; where there is suppression, there is innovation.”

“We are witnessing an ever-expanding horizon for China to become a science and technology powerhouse,” he said.

The Trump threat?

How much Trump’s policies will challenge China remains an open and urgent question for Beijing.

The US president has refrained so far from slapping Chinese imports with the blanket 60% or more tariffs that he had threatened on the campaign trail.

He’s been focused elsewhere, including on unleashing sweeping changes to US global leadership by decimating US foreign assistance, threatening to take control of other countries’ sovereign territory, and upending US alliances in Europe, while pulling closer to Russia at the expense of Ukraine.

There are potential risks for Beijing in that shake-up. For example, if a Washington-Moscow rapprochement pulls Xi away from Russian President Vladimir Putin, his closest ally, or if an American dial-down of security in Europe allows it to ramp up attention on Asia.

But Chinese diplomats have also been taking advantage of the changes to play up their country as a responsible and stable global leader, despite criticisms of Beijing’s own aggressive behavior in Asia.

When it comes to tariffs, observers say Beijing is trying to moderate its response, holding out for a potential meeting between Xi and Trump or perhaps even a deal that could avert an escalating trade war.

While China immediately retaliated against two sets of US tariffs this year, including with levies on US energy and key agricultural goods, it has remained measured in its reprisals.

The country’s deficit with the US means it will have less room to hit back if a trade war escalates, but Beijing is expected to be calculating other measures like export controls that it could use for leverage.

And the view from some parts is that even if tariffs cause the Chinese economy short-term pain, it will be the US which loses in the long run. China is still an indispensable part of global supply chains. It’s also better prepared to weather this trade war than the last one, because it’s sending goods to more markets globally now, data show.

“If you play (imposing tariffs) with a peer competitor, it actually would not work that well compared to if you’re doing this with small countries or medium powers,” said Zhou in Beijing, who is also the author of the forthcoming book “Should the World Fear China?”.

China, he said, wants cooperation not friction.

“But since the US is still the stronger side in this relationship, (it will) decide which kind of relationship this is … so China has to say ‘OK – if this has to be to be one of competition, then we must dare to fight,’” he said.