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A new report says an estimated 43,000 people died amid the longest drought on record in Somalia last year and half of them likely were children under 5 years old. It's the first official death toll in the drought withering large parts of the Horn of Africa. At least 18,000 people are forecast to die in the first six months of this year. The report released by the World Health Organization and the United Nations children’s agency and carried out by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine says "the current crisis is far from over." Somalia faces a sixth consecutive failed rainy season.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping arrived in Moscow on Monday on a three-day visit that offers a strong political boost for Russian President Vladimir Putin as fighting in Ukraine grinds on. China and Russia have described Xi's trip as part of efforts to further deepen their "no-limits friendship."

Western sanctions have hit Russian banks, wealthy individuals and technology imports. But after a year of far-reaching restrictions aimed at degrading Moscow's war chest, economic life for ordinary Russians doesn't look all that different than it did before the invasion of Ukraine.

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President Joe Biden spoke Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to express "concern” over his government’s planned overhaul of the country’s judicial system that have sparked widespread protests across Israel and to encourage compromise.The White House said Biden reiterated U.S. concerns about the measure to roll back the judiciary’s insulation from the country’s political system, in a call a senior administration official described as candid and constructive. There was no immediate indication that Netanyahu was shying away from the action, after rejecting a compromise last week offered by the country’s figurehead president.

New York Times Federal Reserve and economy reporter Jeanna Smialek says that UBS buying its rival Credit Suisse in an attempt to the ease fallout resulting from the failure of two American banks should be a comfort for markets in Asia and Europe.

The recent deadly earthquake in Turkey and Syria, which caused billions of dollars in damage, has boosted the prospects of Syria's once widely shunned president return to the Arab fold, but it appears unlikely to jump-start large-scale reconstruction in the war-ravaged country.

The majority of developing nations are set to miss out on the economic benefits of booming green technologies, slowing progress toward their climate goals and widening the inequality gap between rich and poor countries, a United Nations report warns.

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