Hong Kong

• Hong Kong convicted 14 pro-democracy activists - part of the "Hong Kong 47" arrested in 2021 - on spurious charges of trying to overthrow the territory's government by organizing political campaigns immune to China's control. They could be sentenced to life in prison.

• Very preliminary early results show the African National Congress (ANC) leading yesterday's parliamentary vote - but losing its majority for the first time since 1994.
• With 22% of districts reporting, the ANC currently has 43% of votes. The pro-business Democratic Alliance (DA) is getting strong support at 25%, while the Marxist Economic Freedom Fighters party and MK - the new party launched last year by ex-ANC president Jacob Zuma - are both lagging far behind both the ANC and the DA with 9% and 8%, respectively. Full results are expected over the weekend.
• Mining giant BHP backed out of talks to acquire Anglo American, a South African rival. In a telling indicator of the challenges of doing business in South Africa, BHP wasn't interested in Anglo's underperforming South African assets and tried to carve them out of the deal.

• Israel's national security advisor, Tzachi Hanegbi, said he expects it will take "another seven months of combat" in Gaza to defeat Hamas. That's a longer (but perhaps more realistic) horizon than PM Netanyahu's assertion last month that Israel was "on the brink of victory."
• Israel captured the Philadelphi Corridor that separates Gaza and Egypt, hoping to cut off the smuggling trade supplying weapons to Hamas through the buffer zone's underground tunnels. Israel now effectively controls all of Gaza's land.

• SecState Blinken is visiting Eastern Europe in a show of U.S. support for countries that feel threatened by Russian bullying.
• Speaking in Moldova - which Russia taunts by supporting separatists in the eastern breakaway territory of Transnistria - Blinken pledged $135 million in U.S. aid. He also divulged that the U.S. would "adapt and adjust" its stance to consider allowing Ukraine to use U.S. weapons to strike targets inside Russia for the first time.
• Separately, Sweden is sending Ukraine two Saab 340 "early warning aircraft:" high-flying radar planes that can identify targets from far away. Russia will be hunting them down.

• A day after North Korea floated a wave of excrement-filled balloons into South Korea, it carried out a round of higher-tech launches: Pyongyang fired at least 10 short-range ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan today. Japan "strongly protested" the launch at the UN.