Urban workers crowded train stations across China’s largest cities on Tuesday as the country’s mass migration for Lunar New Year holidays hit high gear, an early sign of economic recovery as officials confirmed a historic plunge due to COVID-19 curbs.

The world’s second-largest economy slowed sharply in the fourth quarter, data showed on Tuesday, dragging 2022 growth down to one its worst performances in nearly half a century after three years of COVID restrictions and lockdowns.

With mass travel for the Lunar New Year possible for the first time in nearly three years after the relaxing of some of the world’s tightest COVID curbs, the economy stands to gain from hundreds of thousands of people a day spending more as they return to China’s hinterland.

While many analysts say a return to economic normality will be gradual as the impact of COVID weakens, some see the Lunar New Year as a welcome early consumption boost.

“Peak infections passed in major cities in January, and with the Spring Festival coming, tourism is back, and the signs of a recovery in consumption are obvious,” said Nie Wen, a Shanghai based economist at the investment firm Hwabao Trust.

But even as workers move out, health experts fear a broadening and deepening of its COVID outbreak, leaving the elderly in rural villages particularly vulnerable.

Despite Chinese authorities confirming a huge increase in deaths on Saturday – announcing that nearly 60,000 people with COVID had died in hospitals between Dec. 8 and Jan. 12 – World Health Organization (WHO) officials are seeking a more sweeping accounting of death rates.

The WHO earlier welcomed Saturday’s announcement after last week warning that China was heavily under-reporting deaths from the virus.

Specifically, the U.N. agency wants information on so-called excess mortality – the number of all deaths beyond the norm during a crisis, the WHO said in a statement to Reuters.

“This is especially important during periods of surges when the health system is severely constrained,” the statement said on Monday.

The WHO added that it would continue working with China to provide advice and support, but had not yet fixed another formal meeting with Chinese officials after WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus spoke with Ma Xiaowei, director of China’s National Health Commission, at the weekend.

The Ministry of Transport has estimated the rush will see a total of 2.1 billion passenger trips nationwide between Jan. 7 and Feb. 15 as many Chinese city dwellers make the most of their first chance for Lunar New Year trips to see extended family in home regions since the pandemic began.

Chinese officials jettisoned Beijing’s “zero COVID” policy – an approach previously championed by ruling Communist Party leader Xi Jinping – in early December, letting the virus run unchecked across its population of 1.4 billion people.

State media reported that some 390,000 passengers were expected to travel from Shanghai train stations on Tuesday alone for what is known as the Spring Festival holiday – seen as the world’s largest annual mass migration before COVID.

As travellers moved through stations in Shanghai, China’s largest city, some expressed optimism despite the risks.

“I am not worried about the virus. Because we are young, our immunity is okay,” 37-year-old migrant worker Zhou Ning told Reuters outside the Shanghai Railway Station as he prepared to head back to his home area in Bazhong in the northeastern province of Sichuan.

“Back in my hometown, there are many people who have tested positive, but I am not worried about it.”

On a train leaving Shanghai, fellow migrant worker Feng Hongwei, aged 21, said he was “so happy, so excited” as he began a trek home to Puyang, Henan. “I haven’t seen my parents in two years”.

The holiday season has also sparked a revival in domestic air travel with more than 70,000 flights across China between Jan. 7-13, according to industry data reported by Shanghai Securities News on Monday. That’s equivalent to more than 80% of the levels seen before the pandemic.

International air links are also recovering. Emirates Airlines on Monday became the latest carrier to announce it would resume services from its Dubai hub to Shanghai this week, and would operate daily flights to Shanghai and Beijing from March.

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Hong Kong’s leader John Lee is optimistic he can remove the last pandemic curbs including mask wearing this year.

“My hope in 2023 is to remove all Covid restrictions,” Lee said in an interview with Hong Kong Commercial Daily. He said he hopes “all problems will be resolved in the first quarter,” according to the report published Tuesday.

The mask mandate is one of the only major curbs left remaining from the city’s Covid Zero days, along with an isolation order for positive cases. Failure to abide by the rule, which was imposed in July 2020, risks a HK$5,000 ($640) fine. Hong Kong gave up most other restrictions in December after China suddenly abandoned its strict approach to controlling the virus. The city’s border with the mainland reopened this month for the first time in three years.

Lee said last month the mask mandate would likely be the last measure the government removes because it’s effective against Covid and other respiratory diseases. The city’s pandemic restrictions undermined the economy, which likely contracted in 2022 for the third time in four years.

“A full return to normal has always been my goal,” Lee told the newspaper. “Of course, I hope that there will be no Covid-19 curbs, including mask orders.”

—With assistance from Kari Lindberg.

(NewsNation) —Jaw-dropping surveillance video out of Beech Grove, Indiana, shows a toddler wielding a loaded gun.

The video first aired live on the show On Patrol: Live hosted by Dan Abrams on Friday and Saturday nights on the Reelz network.

“I was stunned watching this play out,” Abrams said.

On Patrol: Live cameras followed Beech Grove police to an apartment complex Friday night. Neighbors reported a diaper-clad toddler pointing a handgun at them.

Once on the scene, an officer asked people at the complex what they observed.

“My son opened the door and the little boy upstairs was standing there with a firearm. I was like shut the door, he’s got a gun,” one woman said.

Police then went up to a second-floor apartment where a little boy came to the door and let police inside. Investigators encountered the child’s father, Shane Osborne, who says he did not know anything about his son playing with a gun and claimed he does not even own a gun himself.

Osborne, 45, reportedly told officers he had been sick in bed all day. The officers urged him to do a better job of keeping the doors locked, so his son does not get out and wander the hall.

As officers started to file out of the complex, another neighbor stopped them to reveal surveillance video from a prior incident: The same little boy playing with a Smith and Wesson nine-millimeter handgun in a hallway near a stairwell of the apartment building.

“The neighbors, of course, were right. All of us on the On Patrol: Live desk were just stunned watching that video as it came in,” Abrams said.

“That’s absolutely tough to see,” co-host Sean “Sticks” Larkin said during the show.

Robert Mercuri, Deputy Chief for the Beech Grove Police Department, agreed with Larkin during an interview on “Dan Abrams Live.”

“It was incredibly tough to watch. It was like watching something, I don’t want to see this. I want to look away. And you and your colleagues both commented on that. And I think that’s the raw emotion when you see that video, so I don’t think people see this very often,” Mercuri said.

Having just watched the video, officers re-entered the apartment to start looking for the gun.

“Alright, we have video of your kid holding a gun,” one responding officer said to the father. “So, do you have a gun?”

Following a brief search, the toddler appeared to lead the officers to a roll top desk.

“One of the officers on scene had asked him where he put his ‘pew-pew’ as in the sound the young boy was making at the time. The little boy then led him down the hall to a roll top desk that was right in the living room of the apartment,” Mercuri said.

Once the desk was opened, officers reported finding a handgun with 15 rounds in the magazine.

“Thank goodness, no bullet was in the chamber,” Abrams said.

Officers eventually arrested the father for felony child neglect. The crime is punishable by up to two and a half years in Indiana. The little boy was taken to his mother’s home.

(NewsNation) —Jason LaBar, the public defender who previously represented Idaho killing suspect Bryan Kohberger in Pennsylvania, said he appeared to be “an intelligent man,” and “easy to talk to.”

LaBar clarified that “Kohbgerger said he was eager to be exonerated,” which he thinks indicates that Kohberger believes he’s innocent.

At the beginning of the year, LaBar told NewsNation that Kohberger was “eager to be exonerated of charges.” LaBar told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo that he, “wasn’t judging the case at that point in time.”

“Mr. Kohberger has been accused of very serious crimes, but the American justice system cloaks him in a veil of innocence,” LaBar said in a statement earlier this year. “He should be presumed innocent until proven otherwise — not tried in the court of public opinion.”

You can watch LaBar‘s full interview in the player above.

(NewsNation) — The White House revealed over the weekend that five more pages of sensitive files from President Joe Biden’s time as vice president were found at his home in Delaware.

As comparisons between Biden’s case and former President Donald Trump’s case continue to play out in the media, former federal prosecutor David Weinstein — who is not affiliated with either of the investigations — explained why private attorneys are finding presidential documents.

Biden’s attorneys “weren’t looking for these documents to being with,” Weinstein said. “They were conducting an inventory of documents — before in the case of Biden’s office in Pennsylvania where they were removing them from there and then from his house to see what other documents were there. So, in their initial search, they didn’t expect to find any documents. Upon finding them, they stopped and that’s when (the lawyers) bring in people who have (security) clearance.”

Watch the full interview with David Weinstein in the video above.

Ukraine urged the West to speed up its supply of weapons, with the city of Dnipro reeling from a Russian missile strike that killed at least 40 people in an apartment block and Ukrainian troops under increased pressure on the eastern front.

Ukraine’s army General Staff said on Tuesday that Russia had launched more than 70 rocket attacks in the past 24 hours.

It said Russian forces shelled more than 15 settlements near the city of Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region, including the salt-mining town of Soledar, where Russia and Ukraine have waged fierce trench warfare for weeks.

Relentless Russian shelling has completely destroyed the city of Bakhmut and heavily damaged the city of Avdiivka in the centre of the Donetsk region.

“Very heavy fighting is continuing in the two key sectors of … Bakhmut and Avdiivka,” Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said on YouTube.

“The enemy is attacking constantly and around the clock. And we are trying to maintain our positions. Russian troops are active at night – we are in great need of night vision equipment.”

Reuters was not able to verify battlefield reports.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his Monday night video address that the attack on Dnipro and Russia’s attempts to gain the initiative in the war underscored the need for the West “to speed up decision-making” in supplying weapons.

Western countries have produced a steady supply of weapons to Ukraine since Russian forces invaded last Feb. 24 but Zelenskiy and his government are insisting they need tanks.

Britain confirmed on Monday it was going to send 14 Challenger 2 tanks and other hardware, including hundreds more armoured vehicles and advanced air defence missiles.

Germany is under pressure to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine but its government says those tanks should be supplied only if there is agreement among Kyiv’s main allies, particularly the United States.

Oleskiy Danylov, Secretary of Ukraine’s Security Council, also mentioned on Monday night the need for an acceleration in weapons supplies because the government expected Russia “to attempt to make a so-called final push.”

Danylov told Ukrainian television that could take place on the invasion’s anniversary or in March.

“We must prepare for such events every day. And we are preparing … The first and last question is always about weapons, aid to help us defeat this aggressor that invaded our country,” Danylov said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was to host allies at an air base in Germany on Friday to discuss further aid for Ukraine.

Russia calls its actions a “special military operation” to protect its security because its neighbour grew increasingly close to the West. Ukraine and its allies accuse Moscow of an unprovoked war to grab territory and to erase the independence of a fellow ex-Soviet republic.

Russia’s invasion has displaced millions, killed thousands of civilians and left Ukrainian cities, towns and villages in ruins. Kyiv and its allies have also accused Russia of the large-scale deportation of Ukrainians.

Zelenskiy called on the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) on Monday to do more about Ukrainians he says have been forcibly taken to Russia.

The OSCE is the world’s largest regional security organisation, consisting of 57 states and encompassing the United States and all European states, including Russia and all states of the former Soviet Union.

“No international organisation has found the strength to gain access to the places of detention of our prisoners in Russia yet. This must be corrected,” Zelenskiy said.

The U.S. State Department estimated last year that between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens, including 260,000 children, have been forcibly deported into Russian territory.

Russia denies deportations and says those arriving are war refugees. In November, the country’s emergency ministry said that some 4.8 million Ukrainians, including 712,000 children, had arrived in Russia since February.

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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A failed Republican candidate who authorities said was angry over his defeat and made baseless claims the election last November was “rigged” against him was arrested in connection with a series of drive-by shootings targeting the homes of Democratic lawmakers in New Mexico’s largest city.

Solomon Pena, 39, was arrested Monday evening, just hours after SWAT officers took him into custody and served search warrants at his home, police said.

Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina described Pena as the “mastermind” of what he said appears to be a politically motivated conspiracy leading to shootings at the homes of two county commissioners and two state legislators between early December and early January.

Pena ran unsuccessfully in November against incumbent state Rep. Miguel P. Garcia, the longtime Democrat representing House District 14 in the South Valley. Garcia won by 48 percentage points, or roughly 3,600 votes.

After the election, police said, Pena showed up uninvited at the elected officials’ homes with what he claimed were documents proving he had won his race. There was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in New Mexico in 2020 or 2022.

The shootings began shortly after those conversations.

“This type of radicalism is a threat to our nation and has made its way to our doorstep right here in Albuquerque, New Mexico,” Mayor Tim Keller said. “But I know we are going to push back, and we will not allow this to cross the threshold.”

Four men conspired with Pena, who is accused of paying them cash to carry out at least two of the drive-by shootings in stolen vehicles, while Pena “pulled the trigger” during one of the crimes, Deputy Police Commander Kyle Hartsock said.

Detectives identified Pena as their key suspect using a combination of cellphone and vehicle records, witness interviews and bullet casings collected at the lawmakers’ homes, police said. His arrest came one week after Medina announced they had identified a suspect in the shootings.

A lawyer for Pena who could comment on the allegations wasn’t listed Monday night in jail records.

No one was injured in the shootings, which unfolded amid a rise in threats to members of Congress, school board members, election officials and other government workers around the nation. In Albuquerque, law enforcement has struggled to address back-to-back years of record homicides and persistent gun violence.

The shootings began Dec. 4, when eight rounds were fired at the home of Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboa. Days later, state Rep. Javier Martinez’s home was targeted, followed by a Dec. 11 shooting at the home of Bernalillo County Commissioner Debbie O’Malley. More than a dozen rounds were fired at her home, police said.

The final related shooting, targeting state Sen. Linda Lopez’s home, unfolded in the midnight hour of Jan. 3. Police said more than a dozen shots were fired and Lopez said three of the bullets passed through her 10-year-old daughter’s bedroom.

Investigators received a break in the case after technology that can detect the sound of gunfire led an officer to Lopez’s neighborhood shortly after the shots were fired.

The officer found bullet casings matching a handgun found later that morning in a Nissan Maxima registered to Pena. Around 1:30 a.m., about an hour after the shooting at Lopez’s home, police stopped the Nissan about 4 miles (6 kilometers) from the lawmaker’s neighborhood.

The driver, identified Monday night as Jose Trujillo, was arrested on an outstanding warrant, leading to the discovery of more than 800 fentanyl pills and two firearms in the car, police said.

A criminal complaint outlining the exact charges against the former political candidate was expected to be released in the coming days. Additional arrests and charges also were expected, but police declined to elaborate, citing the ongoing investigation.

Detectives also were investigating two additional shootings they initially believed could be related to the Pena case: one in the vicinity of New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez’s former campaign office and another at state Sen. Antonio Maestas’ office. Police on Monday said the shootings do not appear to be connected.

The New Mexico Republican Party condemned Pena in a statement Monday night. “If Pena is found guilty, he must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”