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China saw its hottest year on record in 2023, state media reported this week, as the world’s biggest polluter confronted a series of relentless heat waves and other extreme weather events driven by the human-caused climate crisis.

Daily and monthly temperature records were repeatedly shattered as the year wore on while the country grappled with scorching heat waves, which authorities said had arrived earlier and been more widespread and extreme than in previous years.

China’s exceptional warmth echoed global trends – with scientists confirming that 2023 will officially be the hottest year on record, the result of the combined effects of El Niño and climate change.

The average temperature in China last year stood at 10.7 degrees Celsius – the highest since records began in 1961, according to the National Climate Center, state-run news agency Xinhua reported.

It breaks the previous record of 10.5°C set in 2021.

Across the country, 127 weather stations recorded their highest ever daily temperatures, state-run newspaper China Daily reported.

The highest of those was 52.2°C on July 16 in Turpan’s Sanpu town, in the far western Xinjiang region.

The prolonged and persistent heat affected hundreds of millions of people and put huge strain on the country’s power grid. In July, China Energy Investment Corporation, one of the world’s largest generators of coal-fired power, said the volume of electricity it produced had hit a daily record.

There were also reports of farm animals, including pigs, rabbits and fish, dying from the searing temperatures and wheat fields in central China being flooded by heavy rainfall, raising concerns about food security in the world’s second largest economy.

A similar story played out across the world in 2023, with a series of deadly heat waves and remarkable record temperatures hitting several continents, while unprecedented ocean heat blanketed much of the globe.

Analysis from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service found 2023’s global temperature will be more than 1.4 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels — close to the 1.5-degree threshold in the Paris climate agreement, and beyond which scientists say humans and ecosystems will struggle to adapt.

Extreme highs and lows
At the other end of the scale, China also recorded its lowest ever temperature last year on January 22, when Jintao town in Mohe, northeastern Heilongjiang province dropped to -53° C.

And in December, the capital Bejing recorded its longest cold wave since records began in 1951, as sub-zero temperatures stretched heating capacity of some cities in northern China to its limit.

China’s extreme weather also saw some of the heaviest rainfall in decades, with flooding bringing devastation to millions of people’s lives and causing billions of dollars in damage.

A total of 55 national weather stations recorded their highest daily rainfall in 2023, according to the National Climate Center.

Typhoon Doksuri slammed into southeastern Fujian province on July 28, bringing rains that soaked Hebei, a province of 75 million, and the neighboring cities of Beijing and Tianjin.

Flooding in those regions killed about 30 people, displaced more than 1 million and  washed away houses, bridges and highways, according to Chinese authorities.

The storm also brought the heaviest rainfall Beijing has experienced in 140 years, marking a significant test of the region’s capacity to handle extreme weather that experts warn will become more frequent with climate change.

Scientists are clear that the climate crisis is making extreme weather events – such as heat waves, storms and heavy rainfall – more frequent and intense, and they will continue to become more frequent and severe as the planet heats up while humans burn more fossil fuels.

China is the world’s biggest polluter, making up nearly 30% of global emissions and accounting for over half of global demand for coal, according to the International Energy Agency.

The World Bank has said that without China successfully reducing its planet-heating emissions and transitioning to clean energy, the world will have little chance of achieving its climate goals.

China has been accelerating production of sustainable energy and the country is on track to double its wind and solar energy capacity and hit its 2030 clean energy targets as soon as 2025, a June report found.

In November, China pledged a major ramp-up of renewable energy, alongside the United States, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The country also played a key role in climate negotiations at the COP28 summit in Dubai in December, which made an unprecedented call to transition away from fossil fuels.

However, China did not sign an official agreement to triple renewable energy capacity and double energy efficiency, both by 2030, according to Carbon Brief.

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South Korea’s main opposition party leader Lee Jae-myung is recovering from surgery after being stabbed in the neck during a visit to the southern city of Busan on Tuesday.

Lee underwent a vein reconstruction surgery and is recovering in the intensive care unit, Democratic Party spokesperson Kwon Chil-seung said.

Lee was touring the construction site of the Gadeokdo New Airport and talking to reporters when he was attacked, leaving the politician with a 1-centimeter laceration on the left side of his neck, Kwon said in an earlier statement.

Lee suffered “suspected damage to his jugular vein” and doctors were concerned he may have additional bleeding, Kwon said, citing doctors.

Kwon described the attempt on Lee’s life an act of “terrorism” and “a serious threat to democracy.”

Earlier in the day Democratic Party’s floor leader Hong Ik-pyo said Lee was “in a conscious state” in hospital.

The assailant, who was arrested at the scene, is a man in his sixties, according to Busan police. He approached Lee for an autograph before carrying out the attack with an 18 cm (7 inch) long knife purchased online, the police said in a briefing.

Footage of the brazen attack, captured on live television at the press conference, showed an unidentified man at the front of the crowd suddenly lunging at Lee and striking him in the neck, sending Lee collapsing backwards.

The attacker was then wrestled to the ground and restrained by several people.

Photos showed Lee lying on the floor with his eyes shut and a handkerchief pressed against his neck. Small amounts of blood were visible in some of the photos.

South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol expressed “deep concern” for Lee’s safety after the attack, according to the presidential office.

Yoon emphasized such violence “should not be tolerated under any circumstances” and ordered the police to swiftly investigate, the office said.

Democratic Party floor leader Hong called for party members to remain calm and refrain from making political interpretations of the incident.

‘Be strong!’
Outside the Seoul National University Hospital, a small crowd gathered amid heavy police presence on Tuesday afternoon as the ambulance carrying Lee arrived. One supporter shouted: “Lee Jae-myung, be strong!”

In a statement, South Korea’s national police agency pledged to strengthen personal protection for “key personnel” to prevent similar cases from happening.

South Korea’s politics have been riven by deep polarization between conservative and liberal sides, particularly in recent years which saw former President Park Geun-hye jailed on abuse of power and bribery charges before being pardoned and released in 2021.

Lee, 59, a liberal former provincial governor, narrowly lost to Yoon of the conservative People Power Party in the presidential election in March 2022.

Lee became the leader of the Democratic Party five months later and has been gearing up his party for the parliamentary elections in April.

South Korea has witnessed high-profile incidents of political violence in the past.

Lee’s predecessor in the Democratic Party, Song Young-gil, was attacked in the head with a hammer by a man during a campaign event for Lee’s presidential bid in 2022.

Park, the former President, was attacked with a knife at a party rally in Seoul in 2006 when she served as the chairwoman of the country’s main opposition party at the time, the Grand National Party. She suffered a four-inch cut on her face that required 60 stitches and prevented her from talking normally for weeks.

And in 2015, Mark Lippert, then US ambassador to South Korea, was stabbed in the face by an assailant at a political event he was set to speak at. The ambassador suffered a 4-inch gash from his right cheekbone to his lower jaw that required 80 stitches. His assailant was later sentenced to 12-years in jail.

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An election boycotted by the main opposition as the world’s longest serving female prime minister looks set to extend her rule.

A cricket legend and former prime minister languishing in prison versus a one-time fugitive looking to make a comeback as a powerful military keeps watch.

A populist leader hoping to enter his second decade in power as he pushes a popular but religiously divisive brand of politics.

And an island nation recovering from its worst economic crisis in decades after protesters stormed the presidential palace.

Four South Asian countries are expected to head to the polls next year, in a grand test for democracy that will see nearly 2 billion people across Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka cast their ballots from January through September.

All former colonies who gained independence from Britain within the last century, each are at a different stage of growth and facing a variety of crises and opportunities.

Here’s what you need to know about democracy’s greatest show.

Bangladesh
Bangladesh, a country of some 170 million people, is the first to cast votes on January 7.

The once multiparty democracy is being threatened as its ruling Awami League party continues what rights groups say is a campaign to silence dissent, pushing the republic toward something more closely resembling a one-party state.

Sheikh Hasina, current Prime Minister and chair of the Awami Party, is likely to be reelected as the country’s leader for a fourth consecutive term.

Hasina has been in power since 2009 and won the last election in December 2019, in a poll marred in deadly violence and accusations of poll rigging.

Missing then was her primary opponent Khaleda Zia, a former prime minister and chief of the main opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), who was jailed the year before on corruption charges.

For much of the past three decades, politics in Bangladesh has been defined by a bitter rivalry between the two women, who both saw their politician father and husband respectively assassinated in office. Political turmoil has followed into the second generation.

Zia, 78, now lives under house arrest and her BNP continues to face mounting challenges by Hasina and her ruling dispensation with the mass arrest of its politicians.

The situation has led to protests, and the BNP has decided to boycott the election again, paving the way for Hasina once more.

“The government is claiming to commit to free and fair elections with diplomatic partners while the state authorities are simultaneously filling prisons with the ruling Awami League’s political opponents,” said Julia Bleckner, senior Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, in a November statement.

“A free election is impossible when the government stifles free expression and systematically incapacitates the opposition, critics, and activists through arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearance, harassment, and intimidation,” Bleckner added.

Yet, the country – which is aspiring to become a middle-income country by 2031 – is experiencing an era of economic growth. Much of this is because of the garment manufacturing industry, which accounts for 35.1% of Bangladesh’s annual gross domestic product, according to the US Commerce Department.

“Since it’s come into being, Bangladesh has always had political instability, but they’ve managed to have very good growth rate” said Sreeradha Dutta, professor of international affairs at OP Jindal Global University and author of “Bangladesh on a New Journey – Moving Beyond Regional Identity.”

She added also that the country is building strong relations with key neighbors in the region.

“So irrespective whoever the leader is, the same developmental models will be picked up… because Bangladesh aspires to be something much larger than what it currently is.”

Pakistan
Ruled for much of its 76 years by political dynasties or military establishments, no democratically elected leader has ever completed a full five-year term since Pakistan won independence.

In recent years the country of 230 million has seen the all-too-familiar mix of political instability and militant attacks percolate alongside a particularly acute economic crisis that has been brutal on both middle and lower income families.

Imran Khan, the country’s former prime minister and arguably the most popular figurehead, is languishing behind bars, charged with fraud and facing charges for revealing state secrets – leaving him unable to contest in the upcoming polls in February.

Khan, who was ousted from power in a parliamentary no-confidence vote last year, says the charges against him are politically motivated and framed to stop him from standing in the election, an allegation authorities deny.

TV stations are banned from running Khan’s speeches, and many of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party colleagues have been arrested.

In October, Nawaz Sharif, the fugitive former prime minister of Pakistan, returned to the South Asian nation after nearly four years in self-exile, skirting arrest and stirring up the country’s already fraught political scene and leaving many to believe he is bidding for the top seat once again.

The country, meanwhile, faces mounting challenges – from economic uncertainty and frequent militant attacks to climate catastrophes that are putting millions at risk – setting the stage for a difficult road to recovery for its new leadership.

“Political and economic uncertainty go hand in hand,” said Fahd Humayun, assistant professor of political science & Neubauer faculty fellow at the department of political science at Tufts University.

“And any government coming to power through suspicious elections is not only likely to be on a weak footing and reliant on the military for its political survival but will also be unlikely to attract the capital inflows so badly needed.”

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Joe Biden held Israel closer than any American president ever has in the horrific days after the Hamas attacks on October 7.

But more than two months later, following days upon end of Israeli strikes in Gaza that have killed thousands of civilians, unprecedented tensions over the war are widening between the White House and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden accused Israel, for example, of carrying out “indiscriminate” bombing in an off-camera political event this week. He used exceedingly blunt language, which typically causes pushback from Israel’s leaders, who insist they try to spare civilians but accuse Hamas of using innocent Palestinians as cover.

Diplomatic rifts are deepening as a new US intelligence assessment, exclusively reported by CNN on Thursday, shows that nearly half of the air-to-ground munitions used by Israel in Gaza have been unguided so-called “dumb bombs.”

CNN was given a rare look inside a field hospital in southern Gaza where victims shared stories that showed the harrowing realities of the war.

The next big geopolitical question over the war in Gaza is not whether it will isolate Israel internationally — that’s already happened. It’s whether the White House’s firm support for the operation will also alienate the United States from its friends in a way that could severely compromise wider national security goals.

And the unrelenting toll on Palestinians is also increasing the political price that Biden is paying at home for his backing of Israel — and raising doubts about his capacity to invigorate his political coalition ahead of the 2024 election.

This is the sensitive backdrop of a trip to Israel on Thursday by Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, who will meet Netanyahu and other key officials following strikingly direct criticisms of the right-wing Israeli coalition from the president.

Sullivan plans to address the issue of aid flowing into Gaza and the “next phase of the military campaign,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. Biden’s top White House foreign policy official will also discuss with the Israelis “efforts to be more surgical and more precise and to reduce harm to civilians.”

“That is an aim of ours. And the Israelis say it is an aim of theirs,” Kirby said. “But it’s the results that count.”

Sullivan’s trip suggests Washington believes Israel did not sufficiently take into account warnings by Secretary of State Antony Blinken after the lapsing of a truce earlier this month that its continued operations should take more care to shield civilians than the initial phase of the Gaza operation did. The optics around Sullivan’s trip will also contrast with Biden’s visit to Israel in October, when he told Israelis he understood their pain, shock and “all-consuming rage.” But he also warned Israel not to make the same mistakes made by the US after the September 11 attacks in 2001, and told reporters on the way home that if Israel didn’t take steps to relieve the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, the country would be judged harshly by the international community.

According to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza, 18,412 Palestinians had been killed as of Tuesday. CNN cannot independently verify that number. Some 1,200 Israelis were killed in the Hamas attacks, which caused horrific scenes, including the use of rape as a weapon of war.

Biden’s political exposure on the issue shone through two extraordinary moments on Tuesday that revealed his ebbing patience with Israel. In the off-camera fundraiser, the president warned that Israel was losing international support because of “indiscriminate bombing that takes place.” And, continuing his habit of being startlingly frank in such events, Biden also said that Israel’s right-wing coalition government was “making it very difficult,” adding, “We have to make sure that Bibi (Netanyahu) understands that he’s got to make some moves.”

Clear differences are emerging between the two governments on what happens to Gaza immediately after the war and on the distant dream of a Palestinian state.

The war has exacted a terrible human toll. But it has also triggered unforeseen political reverberations in the United States. It set off a fresh wave of antisemitism and exposed equivocation about discrimination toward Jews, including among some progressives and in America’s liberal Ivy League universities. There’s been anger at the carnage in Gaza among Arab American voters, a crucial demographic for Democrats in a key battleground state like Michigan, where Biden’s poll numbers are suffering.

And Washington’s global leadership now threatens to take a hit over its support for Israel.

In a hugely symbolic move Tuesday, three of America’s closest allies — Canada, Australia and New Zealand — broke with Washington to urge urgent efforts to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza. “The price of defeating Hamas cannot be the continuous suffering of all Palestinian civilians,” prime ministers of the three nations said. The issue has now caused a rare split in the Five Eyes intelligence sharing alliance, which also includes the US and the United Kingdom. And even the UK, which ensures its foreign policy almost always sides with the US, is hedging its bets, after abstaining on a UN Security Council resolution demanding a ceasefire that the US vetoed.

The dramatic diplomatic maneuvering seems to have got the White House’s attention.

“The president yesterday reflected the reality of global opinion, which also matters. Our support for Israel is not diminished. But we have had concerns,” Kirby said. “And we have expressed those concerns about the prosecution of this military campaign, even while acknowledging that it’s Hamas that started this, and it’s Hamas that is continuing it.”

But how much will increasing domestic and international pressure on Biden change his approach to Israel?

For all his increasing frustration, the president is pro-Israel to the core and it would still be a huge surprise if he adds tangible pressure to his rhetorical rebukes of Netanyahu. One possibility would be to back conditions on a $14 billion aid package to Israel – although officials told CNN the administration currently has no plans to do that, despite growing calls by Democratic lawmakers and human rights organizations for the US to stop providing weapons unless Israel does more to protect civilians in Gaza.

And that aid measure, mired in bitter clashes between the White House and far-right Republicans, can’t make it through Congress as it is. Plus, Israel believes it is engaged in an existential fight not just for itself, but for the survival of the Jewish people. The ferocity of its operation in Gaza is a signal that it will take care of its security however it sees fit.

It’s not clear that Biden, or anyone else in the outside world, could stop this if he wanted to. But the political cost he is paying will continue to mount.

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Since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the Gulf state of Qatar has come under fire by Israeli officials, American politicians and media outlets for sending hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Gaza, which is governed by the Palestinian militant group.

But all that happened with Israel’s blessing.

In a series of interviews with key Israeli players conducted in collaboration with Israeli investigative journalism organization Shomrim, CNN was told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued the cash flow to Hamas, despite concerns raised from within his own government.

Qatar has vowed not to stop those payments. Qatari minister of state for foreign affairs Mohammed bin Abdulaziz Al-Khulaifi told CNN’s Becky Anderson on Monday that his government will continue to make payments to Gaza to support the enclave, as it has been doing for years.

“We’re not going to change our mandate. Our mandate is our continuous help and support for our brothers and sisters of Palestine. We will continue to do it systematically as we did it before,” Al-Khulaifi said.

Israeli sources responded by pointing out that successive governments had facilitated the transfer of money to Gaza for humanitarian reasons and that Netanyahu had acted decisively against Hamas after the October 7 attacks.

When did the Qatari payments start?
In 2018, Qatar began making monthly payments to the Gaza Strip. Some $15 million were sent into Gaza in cash-filled suitcases – delivered by the Qataris through Israeli territory after months of negotiation with Israel.

The payments started after the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Palestinian government in the Israeli occupied West Bank that is a rival of Hamas, decided to cut salaries of government employees in Gaza in 2017, an Israeli government source with knowledge of the matter told CNN at the time.

The PA opposed the Qatari funding at the time, which Hamas said was meant for the payment of public salaries as well as medical purposes.

Israel approved the deal in a security cabinet meeting in August 2018, when Netanyahu was serving his previous tenure as premier.

Even then, Netanyahu was criticized by his coalition partners for the deal and for being too soft on Hamas.

The prime minister defended the initiative at the time, saying the deal was made “in coordination with security experts to return calm to (Israeli) villages of the south, but also to prevent a humanitarian disaster (in Gaza).”

Ahmad Majdalani, an Executive Committee member at the Palestine Liberation Organization in the West Bank, accused the United States of orchestrating the payment.

Why did Israel back the payments?
Israeli and international media have reported that Netanyahu’s plan to continue allowing aid to reach Gaza through Qatar was in the hope that it might make Hamas an effective counterweight to the PA and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

PA officials said at the time the cash transfers encouraged division between Palestinian factions.

Major General Amos Gilad, a former senior Israeli Defense Ministry official, told CNN the plan was backed by the prime minister, but not by the Israeli intelligence community. There was also some belief that it would “weaken Palestinian sovereignty,” he said. There was also an illusion, he added, that “if you fed them (Hamas) with money, they would be tamed.”

Shlomo Brom, a former deputy to Israel’s national security adviser, told the New York Times that an empowered Hamas helped Netanyahu avoid negotiating over a Palestinian state, saying the division of the Palestinians helped him make the case that he had no partner for peace in the Palestinians, thus avoiding pressure for peace talks that could lead to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, told CNN Sunday that after years of flagging his concerns to the Netanyahu government when he was minister of education, he stopped the suitcase cash transfers when he became prime minister in 2021.

“I stopped the cash suitcases because I believe that horrendous mistake – to allow Hamas to have all these suitcases full of cash, that goes directly to reordering themselves against Israelis. Why would we feed them cash to kill us?” Bennett asked.

The cash payments stopped, but the transfer of funds to Gaza continued under Bennett’s leadership, according to the New York Times.

An Israeli official told CNN that any suggestion that Netanyahu wanted to maintain a “moderately weakened” Hamas was “utterly false” and that he had acted to weaken Hamas “significantly.”

“He led three powerful military operations against Hamas which killed thousands of terrorists and senior Hamas commanders,” the official said. “Successive Israeli governments before, during and after Netanyahu’s governments enabled money to go to Gaza. Not in order to strengthen Hamas but to prevent a humanitarian crisis by supporting critical infrastructure, including water and sewage systems to prevent the spread of disease and enable daily life.”

Has Netanyahu faced a backlash?
Netanyahu has come under increasing criticism as the depth of his government’s involvement in the move, as well as the motivations for it, come to light again.

The funding deal is one reason why many Israelis today place part of the blame for the October 7 Hamas terror attack on Netanyahu personally. Numerous people told CNN they believed that allowing the payments made Hamas stronger and, ultimately, made the brutal attacks worse.

“The premier’s policy of treating the terror group as a partner, at the expense of (Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud) Abbas and Palestinian statehood, has resulted in wounds that will take Israel years to heal from,” wrote Tal Schneider in an opinion piece in the Times of Israel on October 8, a day after Hamas’ devastating attack.

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