Our daily hop, skip, and jump around the world

🇭🇰 Hong Kong approved a national security bill aimed at curbing domestic dissent. The bill establishes new punishments ranging from several years to life in prison for a range of offenses, including treason, sabotage, sedition, external interference, and espionage. It also allows for local criminal trials to be held behind closed doors, and grants Hong Kong’s leader the authority to ban organizations from the city if they’re found "working for foreign forces.” The new measure comes on top of a China-imposed national security law in 2020 that has been used to jail pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.

🇯🇵🏦 Japan’s central bank ended its eight-year experiment with negative interest rates. Bank of Japan officials said yesterday’s rate hike – from minus 0.1% to a range of 0-0.1% – came in response to Japan’s economic growth and increased inflation since 2016, when the bank made its unconventional rate decision. A negative interest rate means that each year a deposit is worth less, and borrowers earn interest. In theory, negative-rate policies support economic activity and inflation through the same process as conventional interest rate cuts – though the practice has been used sparingly throughout history.

🇵🇸 Famine is “imminent” in northern Gaza, per a leading global authority on hunger. A new report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) projected that the ~300,000 Palestinians living in northern Gaza will experience famine by the end of May. The IPC also found that as many as 1.1 million Gazans could face what the group characterized as the worst stage of hunger by mid-July, which involves severe levels of starvation, destitution, acute malnutrition, and death.