Chokwe District, Mozambique – I have been reporting on climate change stories for nearly all of this month. It wasn’t planned – it just ended up like that. A routine deployment to Kenya saw me head to the Kenya-Somalia border in Mandera town for a drought story.

At the time, there was hardly any international news coverage on this drought in the Horn of Africa. I was not expecting anything dramatic. I was wrong. The drought is bad.

As soon as we drove to really remote parts of Mandera County, I started seeing signs that something was wrong.

The team drove past several dry riverbeds. The camels were thin. Then, we saw the communal graveyards where dead livestock had been dumped and burned.

I spoke to a local chief in Mandera, Adan Molu Kike. He was a quiet, unassuming elderly man who went out of his way to explain to me how devastating the recent drought is.

“Our animals started dying in July last year, and they are still dying,” he told me. Then, he asked what country I had come from. I told him Zimbabwe.

“Have you seen a drought this bad in your country?” he asked me.

We were moving with a team from the Kenya Red Cross Society. They were keen to show me more about how the drought was affecting communities.

Water was the biggest challenge. With several rivers dry, water had to be brought in every week from aid agencies. Some communities got water once a week. Others saw the water bowsers arrive twice a week.

There is usually a timetable. If you miss a delivery, that means no water until the next delivery. The water – brown in colour – also has to be shared with livestock.

I see pastoralist Mohamed Hussein dragging two containers of water he has just collected from the water bowser delivery truck. He looks tired and doesn’t look like he wants to chit-chat, but he indulges us.

“I had 100 animals, but now I have only 20 left … My crops in the field are dead,” he says.

We talk about the drought and water situation. He says three of his goats died the night before. He says it’s because of the drought.

Hussein insists on showing me the animals in his back yard. He drags one away and tosses the dead goat in a bush. I remember thinking that out here in the desert like Mandera, it’s survival of the fittest.

Yet, people can’t mourn for too long over dead livestock. He has to keep the few he has left alive or else his family goes hungry.

From extreme drought to massive floods

As journalists, we come into a country, file our reports and fly home. But some experiences stay with you. This drought story did.

I left Kenya and headed home, thinking my stint reporting on climate change stories was finished for at least a few months. I was wrong.

I got back home to learn that it’s been raining a lot. Some places in Harare, Zimbabwe, even had flash floods. I thought nothing of it – only that it was interesting coming from a very hot climate to a wet one.

Then, the next day, news started circulating about floods and very heavy rain in South Africa and Mozambique.

As journalists, we never really switch off, so I was keeping an eye on the floods in Southern Africa, but I didn’t expect to be deployed to another climate change crisis so soon.

A day or two later, the situation worsened, and I was heading to Mozambique.

Again, at the time, there wasn’t much in international media coverage about the floods in Mozambique. South Africa was getting more media attention at the time. So I had no idea of the scale of these floods.

I landed in Mozambique and went to a neighbourhood in the capital, Maputo, that was affected by floods.

I put on my gumboots and waded through dirty, smelly floodwaters in between people’s submerged homes. I was shocked – but nothing prepared me for what I later saw elsewhere in the country.

In Marracuene, I saw a huge toll gate submerged and road signs sticking out on top of the water along a major highway. The highway was now metres deep underwater.

Then, we got Xai Xai, the capital of Gaza province in the south. Swaths of agricultural land were underwater. Parts of Xai Xai city were submerged. Restaurants, shops and businesses in the city centre sat in water.

“Now, the water must go down first, and then, we must start cleaning,” Richard Sequeira, the boat captain who was showing me the devastation, said. “There are a lot of snakes and animals around. Maybe 45 days to two months, we will be out of our houses and living like this.”

He is right. It could be weeks before the water recedes and disappears. But there could be more flooding in the coming days or weeks.

Authorities in neighbouring South Africa’s Mpumalanga province have ordered people to evacuate from flood-prone areas immediately. The dam there is full and could start releasing water.

Mozambique is downstream. That means all that water will make its way to already flooded communities. An Al Jazeera reporting team could be back here again.

The wife of South Korea’s ousted former president has been sentenced to 20 months in jail for accepting bribes from the controversial Unification Church.

However, the court cleared 52-year-old Kim Keon Hee on charges of stock price manipulation and receiving free opinion polls from a political broker before the 2022 presidential election, which her husband Yoon Suk Yeol won.

Yoon has already been sentenced to five years’ in jail for abusing power and obstructing justice in relation to his failed martial law bid in 2024.

This marks the first time in South Korea’s history that a former presidential couple are convicted at the same time.

On Wednesday, Judge Woo In-sung at the Seoul Central District Court ruled that Kim had “misused her position as a means of pursuing personal gain”.

“The higher [one’s] position, the more consciously one must guard against such conduct… The defendant failed to reject solicitations and was preoccupied with self-adornment,” the judge said.

A special counsel team appointed to the case said Kim received 80m won of gifts, which include a Graff diamond necklace and several Chanel handbags, from the Unification Chruch between April and July 2022, in exchange for business and political favours.

The team had sought a 15-year jail term and a fine of 2 billion won for all three charges heard today – for which Kim was convicted of one – but the judge noted that Kim was not the one who demanded or solicited the bribes, and that she had “no significant criminal record”.

She was however ordered to pay back 12.85 million won ($9,000; £6,500) in cash and the court also ordered the confiscation of the diamond necklace.

Kim has also been charged over her alleged involvement in a scheme to recruit Unification Church followers to the conservative People Power Party that her husband was part of, and accepting gifts in exchange for government job appointments. The court has yet to hear those cases.

The former first lady had denied all charges saying they were “deeply unjust”, although she did admit to receiving Chanel bags, which she said she later returned without using.

She made a public apology when she appeared for questioning last August. “I am truly sorry that a nobody like me has caused concern to the people,” she said.

Investigations into Kim’s dealings with the Unification Church had also led to the arrest of church leader Han Hak-ja.

Apart from the criminal allegations, Kim has also been the subject of other controversies. Last year, Sookmyung Women’s University annulled an art education degree she graduated with in 1999, after an ethics panel found she plagiarised her master’s thesis.

Additional reporting by Leehyun Choi in Seoul

President Donald Trump said his administration was “going to de-escalate a little bit” in Minnesota, after the second fatal shooting of a US citizen by federal immigration officers there.

“Bottom line, it was terrible. Both of them were terrible,” he said in a Fox News interview on Tuesday.

In early January Renee Good was fatally shot by an immigration officer, followed by Alex Pretti, who was killed after being stopped by border agents this past weekend.

Pretti’s death reignited local protests and public outcry across the country, and led to criticism from lawmakers in both parties. Trump’s remarks are the latest sign his administration is taking a step back on its operations in Minnesota.

Speaking to other reporters ahead of a rally in Iowa Tuesday night, Trump said he viewed the killing of Pretti, an intensive care nurse at a veterans’ hospital, as “a very unfortunate incident”.

Asked by reporters about whether he agreed with characterisations of Pretti as a “domestic terrorist,” Trump said: “I haven’t heard that.”

Trump then added: “He shouldn’t have been carrying a gun.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said shortly after the shooting that Pretti “wasn’t there to peacefully protest, he was there to perpetuate violence,” and accused him of “domestic terrorism”.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has also said the agents fired in self-defence, after Pretti resisted attempts to disarm him.

Noem said Pretti was shot because he was “brandishing” a gun during a confrontation, but local authorities said the gun was legally registered and that Pretti was shot after the firearm was removed.

Eyewitnesses and local officials, however, have challenged that account, saying he had a phone in his hand, not a weapon.

A preliminary report drafted by Customs and Border Protection also appears to contradict the initial DHS account of events. It says two of its agents fired their weapons at Pretti.

It does not mention that Pretti was reaching for his firearm, according to a copy of the report seen by the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

On Monday, the DHS pulled the Minnesota mission’s leader and figurehead, Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino, from the state. The department said it was deploying the White House’s border tsar, Tom Homan, to take over there.

Homan posted on social media on Tuesday that he had met with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and local law enforcement officials.

Pretti’s death, coming two weeks after the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good, enraged local residents and sparked fresh calls from state and city officials for the Trump administration to withdraw its 3,000 immigration agents and officers from the region.

In the interview with Fox News, Trump appeared to defend the Minnesota operation, saying “we took thousands of hardened criminals” out of the state, “so they have good crime numbers.”

“That’s all working out, we have Tom Homan there now,” he said, before adding the administration would “de-escalate”.

Stephen Miller, a top White House aide working on the administration’s deportation initiative, told CNN that the White House “provided clear guidance to DHS that the extra personnel that had been sent to Minnesota for force protection should be used for conducting fugitive operations to create a physical barrier between the arrest teams and the disruptors”.

“We are evaluating why the [US Customs and Border Patrol] team may not have been following that protocol,” Miller said in his statement to CNN.

Some Republican leaders and lawmakers have called for an investigation into Pretti’s death, including Vermont Governor Phil Scott and US Senator Pete Ricketts of Nebraska.

“The nation witnessed a horrifying situation this weekend,” Ricketts wrote on X. While he reaffirmed his “support for funding ICE remains the same,” Ricketts said he expected “a prioritized, transparent investigation into this incident”.

A federal judge has blocked DHS from destroying or altering evidence.

In his speech at the Iowa rally on Tuesday night, which was dedicated to his economic policies, Trump did not discuss the current situation in Minnesota in-depth, but talked about his immigration crackdown more broadly, citing a Harvard Harris poll from December that suggested 80% of Americans support his administration’s efforts to deport illegal immigrants who have committed crimes.

Canadian-American rock star Neil Young is offering Greenlanders a year’s free access to his archives in what he hopes will “ease some of the unwarranted stress and threats” they are receiving from the Trump administration.

Donald Trump has threatened to annex the Danish territory for what he says are national security reasons, though recently walked back comments, saying he was seeking “immediate negotiations” and insisting he “won’t use force”.

Young is known for his political protests, and has been a long-time vocal critic of Trump.

He announced the offer “of peace and love” on his website, where he added that he hoped “other organisations will follow in the spirit of our example.”

In his statement, signed “love earth”, Young refers to the Trump administration as “our unpopular and hopefully temporary government”.

Access to Young’s digital archive usually starts at around $25 (£18), depending on the subscription package. To secure free, access a Greenland registered mobile phone number will be required for verification.

In 2020 Young took legal action to try to stop the president from using his music at campaign rallies.

Earlier this month, Young wrote on his website: “Wake up people! Today the USA is a disaster. Donald Trump is destroying America bit by bit with his staff of wannabes…He has divided us.”

Young has also called on people to boycott Amazon over owner Jeff Bezos’s donations to the Trump campaign and support for the administration.

In 2024, Young ended a two-year boycott of streaming giant Spotify, which he had started in opposition to the platform streaming Joe Rogan’s podcast.

In 2022, he told Spotify to remove hits like Harvest Moon and Heart of Gold, complaining that Rogan was spreading vaccine misinformation.

Other artists, including Joni Mitchell and India Arie, also removed their songs in solidarity.

The singer said at the time that his return did not reflect a reversal of his stance, but that the decision came after Rogan signed a $250m deal to make his podcast available on multiple platforms, rather than remaining a Spotify exclusive.

Neil Young was born in Canada but later moved to the US and holds dual citizenship.

These are the key developments from day 1,434 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Wednesday, January 28:

Fighting

• At least four people were killed in a Russian drone attack on a passenger train in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram. Zelenskyy added that four people were still missing, and that two people were injured in the attack.
• In Ukraine’s Odesa region, three people were killed, and 25 others were injured in a Russian attack on a building, the head of the regional military administration, Serhiy Lysak, said on the Telegram messaging app.
• One person was killed in a Russian aerial bomb attack on a kindergarten, which was being used as a community centre for Ukrainian people to charge phones and warm up during power outages, the head of the Kostiantynivka city military administration, Serhii Horbunov, said on Facebook.
• A man and a woman were killed in a Russian drone attack as they were trying to evacuate from the village of Hrabovske in Ukraine’s Sumy region, Ukraine’s army reported.
• Russian forces shot down 105 Ukrainian drones in a 24-hour period, according to a Russian Defence Ministry report carried by the TASS state news agency.
• The Russian Defence Ministry also claimed that Russian forces had seized the Ukrainian settlement of Novoyakivlivka in the country’s Zaporizhia region and Kupiansk-Vuzlovyi in the Kharkiv region, according to TASS.
• However, Andriy Kovalenko, the head of the Centre for Countering Disinformation under Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, denied that Russia had captured Kupiansk-Vuzlovyi, calling it a “lie”. Meanwhile, an open intelligence map of troop movements by Ukraine’s volunteer organisation DeepState did not show Russian troops in the area of Novoyakivlivka.

Energy crisis

• Ukrainian Minister of Energy Denys Shmyhal said that 710,000 people remain without electricity in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, as an energy crisis continues across the country following Russian attacks on power infrastructure amid freezing winter conditions.
• The European Union is providing 447 generators to be used in Kyiv, the city of Kropyvnytskyi and front-line communities, of which 76 were received on Tuesday, Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform reported.
• Nearly 1.3 million residents of Russia and Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia experienced electricity outages last week due to Ukrainian attacks, the ambassador-at-large of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rodion Miroshnik, said, according to TASS.
• Ukrainian state oil and gas firm Naftogaz said on Tuesday that a Russian strike had targeted one of its facilities in a western region of the country.
• Russian forces captured 17 settlements and took control of more than 500 square kilometres of territory (193 square miles) in Ukraine so far this month, Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, said on Tuesday, according to the Reuters news agency. However, the DeepState map puts this claim into doubt.

Politics and diplomacy

• US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that very good things are happening in negotiations aimed at ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in comments to reporters as he left the White House, without providing details.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, said the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from Ukraine’s Donbas region, currently under attack and occupation by Russian forces, was the path to peace. “Donbas withdrawal is the path to peace for Ukraine,” Dmitriev said on X.
• An oil tanker under EU sanctions for carrying Russian oil is being escorted to the port of Tanger Med in Morocco by a Spanish rescue ship, Spain’s Merchant Marine said.
• Finland’s prime minister, Petteri Orpo, told reporters in Beijing that China and its president, Xi Jinping, have the opportunity to bring about an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine by influencing Putin and reducing cooperation with Moscow.
• Chinese Minister of Defence Dong Jun told his Russian counterpart that Beijing was willing to enhance strategic coordination with Moscow and jointly improve their capacity to respond to risks and challenges, state media reported.
• “China is willing to work with Russia to earnestly implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state, strengthen strategic coordination, enrich the substance of cooperation, and improve exchange mechanisms,” Dong said in a video call with Russian Defence Minister Andrei Belousov, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua.
• Slovakia will file a lawsuit to challenge the EU’s decision, adopted by a qualified majority, to ban Russian gas imports, news website Dennik N cited Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico as saying on Tuesday.